THE WATER SHREW 139 



body are out of the water. The most remarkable feature of its 

 appearance when in the water, and on this point all observers 

 are agreed, is a curious flattening of the body, the sides being 

 expanded and the tail, of course, extended backwards. It 

 swims with great velocity, and is equally at home beneath or 

 on the surface, but, according to Mr English, dislikes long 

 immersions, which sodden the hair on its head and back. 

 Like the dipper amongst birds it possesses the power of 

 walking, or even of rapidly running upon the bottom of a 

 stream,^ and its activity is so surprising as to give the impres- 

 sion that it can walk on the surface also. Again, like some 

 species of sea-birds, it simply runs in and out of water, as 

 Mr E. T. Daubeny has remarked,^ as if air and water 

 were both alike to it, and it were equally at home in either 

 element, but it can dive well enough if disturbed, dropping in 

 with a little splash.^ It is at all times a very beautiful and pleas- 

 ing object. When submerged, innumerable bubbles, resting on 

 its deep brown coat, silver it to a blue-grey tint ; then as it 

 leaves the water its fur is seen to be perfectly dry, having 

 repelled the liquid as completely as the feathers of a water- 

 fowl. 



Although it obtains most of its food in streams or ponds, the 

 Water Shrew is in no way dependent for its existence upon 

 water. In fact, it has been so often found at such distances 

 from situations apparently most congenial, as to suggest 

 that it is at least equally at home in woods and pastures. 

 It is its habit to haunt the ponds or streams which it affects 

 in pairs or little colonies, and it is possible that on the 

 exhaustion of the food-supply in these, it resorts to dry land, 

 there to wander until it finds some new aquatic locality 

 untenanted. In some cases its presence in a dry locality is 

 probably due to its following up some old, and now hardly 

 perceptible, water-course. This is the case in the dry farm 

 occupied by Mr A. H. Cocks, where there is a water-course 

 which flows during a very few weeks at irregular intervals of 

 a few years down the valley to the Thames.* The water shrews 

 discover the first moistening of the bed, before it is noticeable 



' See H. Layer's Essex; also W. Prior, Naturalist, 1899, 240. 



^ Nature Notes, 1902, 227. ^ T. A. Coward, MS. * A distance of four miles. 



