( 421 ) 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



Lesser Shrew in Cambridgeshire.— In September, 1899, I obtained 

 two batches of pellets of the Barn-Owl from nesting places in hollow trees 

 at Wisbech St. Mary. They yielded respectively one and four skulls of 

 the Lesser Shrew (Sorex minutus), in addition to remains of the Common 

 Shrew, Water Shrew, Bank, Field, and Water Voles, Long-tailed Field- 

 Mouse, Common Mouse, Brown Rat, and House-Sparrow. The Lesser 

 Shrew, although probably not uncommon, does not appear to have been 

 often noticed in the fens. Jeuyns, quoted by Miller and Skertchly in 

 ' The Fenland Past and Present,' says, " I have taken it in a single 

 instance in Horningsea Fen, but not elsewhere." — Charles Oldham 

 Alderley Edge). 



Lesser Shrew and Bank Vole in Berks.— In answer to Mr. W. H. 

 Warner's enquiry (ante, p. 381), I am pleased to be able to inform him that 

 the Lesser Shrew (Sorex minutus) is certainly found in this part of Berk- 

 shire ; I have taken it, but not recently. I much regret I have no skin 

 by me at present. I am not certain about Microtus glareolus. The num- 

 ber of Mus sylvaticus that infests my garden is quite extraordinary ; on one 

 small herbaceous border I caught over seven hundred last year. It is 

 almost impossible to grow yellow crocuses, though they are not nearly so 

 hard on the bulbs of other coloured varieties, and never touch narcissus 

 roots. — Heatley Noble (Temple Combe, Henley-on-Thames). 



Insectivorous Habits of the Long-tailed Field-Mouse— During the 

 winter mouths Long-tailed Field- Mice (Mus sylvaticus) resort in numbers 

 to the narrow horizontal tunnels in the sandstone rock connected with the 

 disused copper mines on Alderley Edge. In November, 1898, when I 

 first noticed the Mouse-holes among the heaps of loose stones, and the im- 

 pressions of multitudes of little feet in the dry sand of the tunnel-floors, I 

 was at a loss to thiuk what had induced the Mice to adopt the life of troglo- 

 dytes. A feeble light penetrates some of the main tunnels, but in the 

 side workings it is pitch-dark at all times of the day, and here footprints 

 were numerous in places more than a hundred and fifty yards from the 

 outer air. The piles of gnawed hips and blackberry-seeds in birds' nests in 



