94 SORICID^— SOREX 



It is widely distributed over almost every kind of country, 

 and would seem to be equally at home on plain or mountain, 

 and it is, besides, occasionally a climber of trees.^ Unfortun- 

 ately, in many cases where individuals have been met with 

 at high altitudes, the species has not been carefully noted. 

 Thus George Sim is responsible for the statement that the 

 Common Shrew occurs upon the summits of the highest 

 mountains of the Dee area in the north-east of Scotland, but 

 his observations lack precise value from the fact that he does 

 not mention the Pygmy Shrew in his book. Again, though it 

 was known that shrews had frequently been caught by the cats 

 at the observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis, it was left to 

 Colonel H. W. Feilden to record ^ the fact that one at any rate 

 of the victims was a Pygmy Shrew, so that it is still uncertain 

 whether the present species reaches the summits of our highest 

 mountains. We have, however, the authority of Messrs W. 

 Eagle Clarke and W. Denison Roebuck, that it ranges to 1300 

 feet in Yorkshire, and we know that in continental Europe 

 shrews ascend to at least 6000 feet,^ and in Norway to the snow- 

 line, so that the Common Shrew is probably one of the most 

 widely distributed, abundant, and hardy of our British mammals. 



Mr Rope,* who has remarked on its semi-aquatic habits, 

 has found its nests by the sides of ditches, and in such 

 cases the occupants when disturbed have often taken to the 

 water, swimming with great ease. On one occasion, after a 

 sudden flood, he found numbers of them on small islands, 

 where in some places only the broken-down stems of the 

 reeds were left unsubmerged. About these the shrews were 

 running with remarkable activity and at times they seemed 

 to be actually treading upon the surface scum, which, with 

 a few floating odds and ends, was sufficient to support their 

 weight. Mr A. H. Cocks writes me that he once received a 

 specimen which had been caught by a man while bathing. 



Despite many assertions to the contrary, shrews are active 

 in winter, especially in the daytime. Even in Siberia, as shown 

 by the American naturalist, Mr N. G. Buxton,* they do not 



' G. T Rope, Zoologist, 1886, 26. 2 ^„„ 5^^^^ j^^f fj^^^^ jggj,^ 42. 



3 Fide Blasius. « Zoologist, 1873, 3525. 



' Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 31st March 1903, 182. 



