Ill 



the mouth of one of its burrows in the moss with which the box 

 was partly filled, and indulge in a peculiar and rather amusing 

 performance. With its mouth wide open and its snout and lips 

 drawn back so as to expose its sharp teeth it would throw its 

 head rapidly from side to side and give forth a peculiar, song- 

 like chatter consisting of a series of rapidly repeated chirps, 

 pitched on a high key, and varied every few seconds with a 

 long-drawn, rasping note on a lower key. While thus engaged 

 it would assume a perfectly fiendish look and express in the 

 most realistic manner all the anger and envy and hate that was 

 in its little heart. 



House mice, white-footed mice and meadow mice, when con- 

 fined in a cage with shrews, will often manifest the most abject 

 terror, and will jump and rush about as though panic stricken 

 until exhausted. The evident hate and fear with which they 

 regard the shrews indicate that they recognize in them a natural 

 and puissant enemy which for reasons of personal safety they 

 must avoid. 



Birds. All the information that I have been able to obtain 

 indicates that the nests of certain terrestrial song-birds are some- 

 times robbed by shrews, although it must be admitted that 

 positive evidence is wanting. In captivity the shrews will eat 

 the eggs and young of small birds and there are good circum- 

 stantial reasons for believing that under natural conditions they 

 will do the same whenever opportunity offers. The fact that 

 several species of mice are also believed to molest birds' nests 

 makes it a difficult matter to prove an actual case against the 

 shrews. 



Several years ago in early spring, I found the nest of a 

 black and white warbler, Mniotilta varia, containing eggs, at the 

 root of a beech tree in the woods of Upshur County. A few 

 days later the nest was found empty, with a conspicuous hole 

 about an inch in diameter through the bottom. An examination 

 of the hole showed it to be the terminus of a small burrow that 

 led off through the ground beneath the nest. This opening 

 through the bottom of the nest seemed to account fully for the 



