THE PYGMY OR LESSER SHREW 119 



North, as in Norway, where, according to Professor Robert 

 Collett, the present species attacks meat and tallow, 



Blasius remarks that it is not so often seen abroad during 

 the day as is its larger congener. But it is equally subject 

 to a mysterious seasonal mortality, in regard to which the late 

 Dr R. J. Burkitt wrote me that on a fine summer day he 

 counted nine lying dead, but apparently unmauled, on his 

 lawn at Rocklands, Waterford, in county Kilkenny ; Mr J. G. 

 Millais finds the same mortality in North Uist. 



Until quite recent years there was no definite information 

 available about the breeding habits of this shrew. The 

 observations quoted below show, however, that the young may 

 vary from two to eight, and that they are born at various 

 dates between early May and September, so that probably 

 the females produce at least two litters each summer. In the 

 south the breeding season may be even longer, since Mr Edwin 

 Hollis has sent me a note of a Devonshire female containing two 

 quite small embryos on 26th February.'' As regards other 

 records, Mr Adams ^ found eight embryos on 5th May, while I 

 received a female suckling young from Mr John Hunter of 

 county Wicklowon i6th May, and another from county Galway 

 on 6th June, in which month Mr Adams found two lots of five 

 and six respectively, and Mr R. Patterson found eight embryos 

 near Belfast ; Professor H. Lyster Jameson found seven in 

 Ireland on 28th June, and five well developed in county Louth 

 on 7th July ; * and in August Mr N. B. Kinnear found six in 

 Orkney, and Mr Oxley Grabham five nearly ready for birth in 

 Yorkshire.* 



So far as I am aware, the first published description of the 

 nursery of the Pygmy Shrew was that of Mr Millais, who met 

 with one in North Uist in August 1899. It was "a small 

 compact ball of dried grass interwoven and interlaced on the 

 top with some of the fine rushes in which the nest was built. 

 It contained five young ones about three parts grown. When 

 held in the hand they appeared to be almost blind, and did not 



* See also description of supposed nursery in Clare Island on ist March, below, 

 p. 120. 



^ frisk Naturalist, 1902, 176. ^ Both in the Dublin Museum. 



' Zoologist, 1895, 427. 



