114 SORICID^— SOREX 



the rufous form of araneus, and should be looked for in minutus. 

 Again, in some American specimens there is an approach to the 

 tricoloured pattern of S. araneus, though not in a very pronounced 

 degree. 



Some specimens from Orkney and the north of Scotland are slightly 

 darker than those from Britain generally, but the series of accurately 

 prepared and measured specimens is too slight to form a basis for final 

 conclusions, which must await the accumulation of a sufficient series 

 from British localities. 



Exceptional variation and sports : — Of white or ' albino Pygmy 

 Shrews, one from Thetford, England, is in the possession of Bidwell 

 (Southwell) ; a second is in J. Whitaker's collection {Field, 19th February 

 1910, 333); a third, a male from Brandon, Suffolk, taken in October 

 1910, belongs to Dalgliesh {Zoologist, 191 1, 27). Of three from Ireland, 

 the first, a cream-coloured example of large size, was taken in Kerry in 

 1840 (Thompson); the second is from Limerick (Daly, Field, 21st 

 August 1897, 318) ; and the third, from Fermanagh, was in the posses- 

 sion of the late Sir Douglas Brooke. 



Geographical variation : — The Pygmy Shrew seems to be compara- 

 tively lacking in plasticity, but Miller {Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 May 1909, 415) has recently described a sub-species, viz., S. m. lucanius, 

 from Monte Sirino, Lagonegro, Italy, with enlarged molars and 

 anterior upper incisors. Gmelin's 6". pusillus, from Persia, and 

 Laxmann's S. ccecutiens, from Lake Baikal, may be large forms of S. 

 minutus, and the same remark perhaps applies to Pallas's 6". gmelini, 

 also from Persia, but the description of the latter is so vague that the 

 type specimen may actually have been some form of Crocidura. At the 

 other end of the palaearctic region, Thomas's .S. m. gracillimus, from 

 Sakhalin, described in Proc. Zool. Soc. (London), 23rd April 1907, 408, 

 from a fragment of one specimen, is said to present distinct skull characters. 

 The same writer's 5. annexus of Korea {Proc. cit., 27th November 1906, 

 859), an animal of the size of araneus, and 5. shinto of Hondo, Japan, a 

 large form with long tail, with a sub-species 6'. s. salvus, larger in body 

 and shorter in tail, in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, are also probably 

 representative. A striking aberration from the type is Miller's 5. 

 macro-pygmcBus of Kamchatka, which in size agrees with S. shinto. In 

 this it seems to carry on the relationship to its nearest geographical 

 neighbour of the group, Merriam's 5. personatus steatori of Alaska, itself 

 a large form of a type (i.e., 5. personatus') which, ranging right across 

 the American continent, is directly representative of and barely 

 distinguishable from 5. minutus. The resemblance is enhanced by the 

 extremely slight tendency shown by S. personatus to vary with locality. 

 A pale desert form is, however, known. 



