THE WATER SHREW. 103 



sional resident in our neighborhood was manifest from 

 the dead bodies of two or three having occurred in my 

 walks ; but it was some time before I discovered a little 

 colony of them quietly settled in one of my ponds, 

 overshadowed with bushes and foliage. It is very 

 amusing to observe the actions of these creatures, all 

 life and animation in an element they could not be 

 thought any way calculated for enjoying; but they 

 swim admirably, frolicking over the floating leaves of the 

 pondweed, and up the foliage of the flags, which, bend- 

 ing with their weight, will at times souse them in the 

 pool, and away they scramble to another, searching 

 apparently for the insects that frequent such places, 

 and feeding on drowned moths (phalaena potamogeta) 

 and similar insects. They run along the margin of the 

 water, rooting amid the leaves and mud with their long 

 noses for food, like little ducks, with great earnestness 

 and perseverance. Their power of vision seems limited 

 to a confined circumference. The smallness of their 

 eyes, and the growth of the fur about them, are con- 

 venient for the habits of the animal, but impediments 

 to extended vision ; so that, with caution, we can ap- 

 proach them in their gambols, and observe all their ac- 

 tions. The general blackness of the body, and the 

 triangular spot beneath the tail, as mentioned by Pen- 

 nant, afford the best ready distinction of this mouse 

 from the common shrew. Both our species of sorex 

 seem to feed by preference on insects and worms ; and 

 thus, like the mole, their flesh is rank and offensive to 

 most creatures, which reject them as food. The common 

 shrew, in spring and summer, is ordinarily in motion 

 even during the day from the sexual attachment, which 

 occasions the destruction of numbers by cats, and other 

 prowling animals ; and thus we find them strewed in 

 our paths, by gateways, and in our garden walks, 

 dropped by these animals in their progress. It was 

 once thought that some periodical disease occasioned 

 this mortality of the species ; but I think we may now 

 conclude that violence alone is the cause of their de- 

 struction in these instances. The bite of this creature 

 was considered by the ancients as peculiarly noxious, 



