358 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
throughout the heavily forested boreal area in the northern part of the 
state. South of this region it occurs in isolated colonies wherever local 
conditions give it a sufficiently boreal environment. 
Principal records. Merriam: ‘This species . . . is notrare in the 
Adirondacks though I do not think it is as plentiful here as Sorex 
coopert | personatus |, which it much resembles in habits” (84d, p. 77). 
Mearns: ‘Three specimens were taken [in the Catskills]. One was 
trapped under a stone wall on the right [north] bank of Schoharie creek, 
one in a hollow stump on the south slope of East Jewett mountain at 
about 2000 feet altitude, and the third under a log a little farther up the 
mountain” (’98b, p. 354). 
I have found the smoky shrew at Peterboro and Chittenango falls, 
Madison co. and at Elizabethtown, Essex co. (95, p. 50-52). At 
the type locality it is local and not common. Most of the specimens 
including the type were trapped in a gorge on the Oneida creek about 
three miles southwest of the village of Peterboro. At Elizabethtown it 
is common and very generally distributed in the forests. 
Remarks. ‘Yhis species will probably be found in many localities in 
New York. Rhoads has recoided it from the following counties in 
Pennsylvania: Pike, Monroe, Sullivan, Clinton, Columbia and Somerset 
(’97b, p. 223). 
Sorex macrurus Batchelder Aig-sazled shrew 
1896 Sorex macrurus Batchelder, Biolog. soc. Washington. Proc. 
3) IDSC, WSO, Le 8 Be 
1898 Sorex macrurus Mearns, U.S. Nat. mus. Proc. 21: 355. 
Type locality. Beedes, Essex co. New York. 
Faunal position. The big-tailed shrew is so slightly known that I am 
unable to assign it a definite faunal position. In all probability it is 
confined to the colder parts of the boreal zone. - 
Habitat. (See principal records). 
_ Distribution in New York, ‘The only localities at which this animal 
has been taken are Beedes, the summit of Mt Marcy and the Catskills. 
In all only ro specimens have yet been collected. . 
Principal records, Batchelder: ‘*On September 9, 1895 at Beedes, 
Essex co. New York I obtained a shrew unlike any species known to me. 
It was caught . . . among some large angular rocks at the head of a 
wooded talus of loose rock. Just above, shading the spot and keeping it 
moist and cool, rise the low cliffs from whose fragments the talus has 
been formed. 
