142 SORICID^. 



and on the Continent, towards clearing up the synonymy 

 of the European representatives of this difficult group 

 of animals. The British species received the attention 

 of the Rev. Leonard Jenyns as early as 1838, and in a 

 series of papers, which merit our sincerest praise, he 

 showed that the Sorex araneus of English naturalists was 

 not identical with the Sorex araneus of French and Ger- 

 man zoologists. He had before this time, in his work 

 on British Vertebrate Animals, suggested the probability 

 that such was the case ; but it was not until the publica- 

 tion of his paper in the Magazine of Zoology and 

 Botany that this became certain. In 1834, M. Duver- 

 noy published an elaborate paper on Shrews in the 

 Transactions of the Natural History Society of Stras- 

 burg, the chief object of which was to make known 

 that there were three distinct types of dentition among 

 these animals, which were regarded by him as indicating 

 three sub-genera. Mr. Jenyns, referring to this paper, was 

 able to show that the Common Shrew of Great Britain 

 possessed a type of dentition quite distinct from that of 

 Sorex araneus, but was identical in that respect, and, in- 

 deed, in all these respects, with the Sorex tetragonurus 

 of Herman, to which he referred it. 



In his second paper, which appeared in the Annals of 

 Natural History for the same year, 1838, Mr. Jenyns 

 again reviews the British species, and confirms his former 

 opinion respecting the identity of the so-called Sorex 

 araneus of the country with the Sorex tetragonurus of 

 Herman. He also in this paper points out an error into 

 which he had fallen in his former one, i.e. of confound- 

 ing a second and smaller British species with the Sorex 

 tetragonurus, which he here regards as new, and describes 

 under the name of Sorex rusticus. His third communi- 

 cation appeared in the Annals and Magazine of Natural 



