190 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



water courses, and on the tide marshes where it seems to flourish, it is often 

 subjected to inundations which wholly submerge its haunts for many hours at 

 a time. I have detected in its burrows the broken and emptied shells of the 

 smaller snails which may be found in moss and decaying mold and under 

 logs and the loose bark of rotting stumps. Of land snails the Pupidce, 

 Helicidce, and Zonitidce, and in fresh water species the Limntzas and Physas 

 are preferred. What salt-water species they consume I cannot state, but no 

 doubt the small mollusca and Crustacea of the salt marshes are utilized. The 

 insect diet of these shrews is no doubt large, but what species are preferred I 

 cannot state. The freshly killed remains of small beetles in their burrows 

 indicates Coleoptera as one of the class devoured. No doubt small, tender 

 larvae of all insects are preferred to the adults. That these tiny shrews are 

 omnivorous is shown by their fondness for the cheese, raisins, cornmeal, oat- 

 meal and pieces of meat with which they are attracted to a trap. They also 

 quickly mutilate an unfortunate shrew or mouse which may be imprisoned in 

 a trap, seeming to prefer the eyes and brains to other parts of the carcass. 

 Their fondness for dead and even decaying animals is attested by Godman. 

 The nest of this species I am not sure I have ever found, though one com- 

 posed of fine grasses in a rotten log where they frequented seemed too small 

 for any other species of mammal known to me. The eyes of this shrew are 

 well developed like those of the short-tailed or mole shrew (Blarina). 

 Owing to the length of tail, shortness of legs, weakness of feet and slender- 

 ness of body this shrew, is more like a weasel in build and habits than like a 

 mole. 



Description of species. As there is only one other species of the long- 

 tailed shrew, now known in our limits, which is likely to be confounded with 

 the masked shrew, I will define both under this heading. The other species 

 is the smoky shrew, Sorex fumeus, next considered, a much rarer species and 

 confined to the mountainous regions of the two States. In those parts it is 

 found associated with S. personatus. The latter is smaller and lighter col- 

 ored, its hind foot being only ^ inch long, while the foot of fumeus is two 

 millimeters (fa of an inch) longer. The color of fumeus is a general smoky 

 slate-color throughout, but that of personatus is clear brown on the back and 

 the underparts are whitish gray. The second and third upper front teeth of 

 fumeus are twice the size of the fourth and fifth ; in personatus there is a reg- 

 ular dimiution in the size of those teeth from the third to fifth. 



Measurements (personatus}. Total length, 105 mm. (4^ in.) ; tail ver- 

 tebrae, 40 (i^); hind foot, 12 (J)- (fumeus} 115 (4^); 45 C 1 ^) U 

 (*)- 



Smoky Shrew. Sorex fumeus Miller. 



1895, Sorex fumeus Miller, North American Fauna, No. 10, p. 68. 



