CHAP.v THE BADGER AND HIS KIN 12/ 



thus kindly furnishing the arvicolae 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 arvicolse, 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, 



