PROVIDING AGAINST A SNOWY DAY. 



35 



SKULL OP A SHREW (MAGNIFIED), SHOWING CHARAC- 

 TER OF THE TEETH. 



t>, tipper jaw and cranium; b, lower jaw; c, under Bide of skull, 

 natural size. 



For the pursuit of this food the dental apparatus is well designed. 

 The head is long and narrow, but the jaws large and powerful. There 

 are twenty-eight to thirty-two teeth (varying, in different species), wliieh 

 are strong, and colored at 

 the points; the forward 

 ones are recurved, and 

 armed with cutting edges; 

 and no worm is so slippery, 

 no beetle so well armed, 

 that the shrew cannot seize, 

 and hold, and crush it. 



The storehouse of the 

 shrew may be placed in 

 the interior of a heap of 

 stones, beneath a great log 

 or in a decayed stump ; but 

 it is generally a burrow, 

 made a foot or so under- 

 ground. If the owner is 

 of aquatic habits it will 

 have an entrance in the bank of a stream below the usual water-level ; 

 but among upland shrews, like Blarina, it is reached by the ramifying 

 tunnels. In and adjacent to these winter-quarters, larders, chiefly of 

 seeds, are provided against a snowy day. A surplus of insects may be 

 treasured also. Audubon and Bach man mention that in one of the gal- 

 leries of the Carolina shrew they found "a small cavity containing a 

 hoard of coleopterous insects . . . fully the size of the animal itself; 

 some of them were nearly consumed, and the rest mutilated, although 

 living." It is hard to believe the wise little miners did not know what 

 they were about when they left their meat-stores " on the hoof," as it were, 

 instead of killing the insects, and running the risk of their almost certain 

 decay. 



Even in the coldest weather of the arctic winter this feeblest of the 

 mammals seems never to become torpid. 



On fine days he climbs up the little chimneys made about the sway- 

 ing stems of a sapling or plant-stalk, and seeks wild grains above the 

 snow, leaving an embroidery of tiny tracks. As for the frost, he is able 

 to generate so much heat in his compact and warmly clothed little frame 

 that temperature, ranging even for long periods below zero, does not seem 

 to trouble him at all. Doubtless, like the half hibernating mice, he makes 



