CHAP. V THE BADGER AND HIS KIN 127 
thus kindly furnishing the arvicola with excellent 
nesting-places in winter, and rendering the trees 
doubly liable to be girdled. In the nurseries in 
northern Illinois, I have seen whole rows of 
young apple-trees stripped of their bark for a 
foot or two above the ground. Thousands of 
fruit-trees, as well as evergreens and other orna- 
mental trees and shrubs, are at times thus killed 
in a nursery in one winter.... Many times in 
spring, when a florist uncovers some choice plant 
he has carefully protected during the winter by 
straw, etc., he is grieved and chagrined to find, 
instead of a fine Dianthus, or half-hardy rose, 
two nimble, black-eyed arvicole, which have 
found good winter quarters in the shelter pro- 
vided for the plant that has furnished them food. 
No little injury do they to vegetables of all kinds, 
destroying the young plants of peas, beans, cab- 
bages, etc., as well as digging up seeds of all 
sorts, and gnawing potatoes, beets, and other roots.” 
How often do we see these creatures, so numer- 
ous and ubiquitous? How unexpected would be 
an accidental discovery of their presence, were it 
not for their too familiar assaults upon our grain- 
fields, granaries, and gardens? And how clever 
they are in their mischief ! 
Then there are the shrews.! Two or three 
kinds of these tiniest of quadrupeds, looking like 
miniature mice, until you examine them, — note 
1 See Plate of Shrews, opposite: Blarina brevicauda, —com- 
mon short-tailed shrew of the eastern United States. Sorex 
cooperi,— an eastern long-tailed shrew; the smallest of known 
mammals. Sorex vagrans,— a common Western long-tailed shrew. 
Urotrichus gibbsi, —the curious shrew-mole of the Pacific coast. 
