WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



come abroad except at night from their homes 

 under logs and stones, where they creep out 

 through tiny tunnels among the grass and be- 

 neath fallen leaves that sharp eyes only may trace. 

 One more often picks up their dead bodies in the 

 woods than those of any other mammal gashed 

 by sharp teeth or claws, very likely, but uneaten. 

 These have been struck down by some owl or weasel 

 or cat, and then rejected in disgust, for they pos- 

 sess a vile odor. Ignorant or careless that they 

 are an important part of nature's police against 

 injurious insects, the farmer usually crushes the 

 shrew beneath his heel as he would a mouse where- 

 ever he finds it; and in some parts of the country 

 the European superstition still lingers that shrews 

 will poison cattle by biting them, or will give them 

 lameness by running across a limb. 



Shrews grade through intermediate forms into 

 the moles, whose lives seem the most circumscribed 

 and uneventful of all quadrupeds. It is a hard 

 fate that has driven these creatures underground, 

 for they are given no easement of these conditions, 

 are never permitted to come outside at all, where 

 their powerful fore-limbs and wonderful armature 

 of digging claws are as useless as they are gro- 

 tesque. Yet the distance anatomically is small 



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