90 Pygmy Shrew 



a part of the historic Dismal Swamp, but the land has been ditched, 

 creating slightly drier conditions than probably prevailed there before 

 development. John Pagels (personal communication), who has used 

 pitfall traps in extensive studies in many counties in Virginia, has 

 caught pygmy shrews in many different habitats but not in wetland 

 habitat. In Virginia, Pagels (1987) has collected Sorex hoyi with six 

 other soricid shrews, but not with Blarina. In conclusion, our studies 

 indicate that in North Carolina, as elsewhere, pygmy shrews have 

 patchy distributions in a range of habitats; they probably occur through- 

 out much more of the state than is presently known. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS— We thank David Webster for useful 

 comments on an earlier draft and Mary K. Clark for receiving the 

 specimens into the collections of the North Carolina State Museum of 

 Natural Sciences in Raleigh and for verifying their identifications. 

 These studies were conducted under permits given by the North Caro- 

 lina Wildlife Resources Commission and the Virginia Department of 

 Game and Inland Fisheries. 



LITERATURE CITED 



Hall, E. R. 1981. The Mammals of North America. John Wiley & 



Sons, New York, New York. 

 Lee, D. S., J. B. Funderburg, Jr., and M. K. Clark. 1982. A distributional 



survey of the North Carolina mammals. Occasional Papers of the 



North Carolina Biological Survey. 1987-10. North Carolina State 



Museum of Natural History, Raleigh. 

 Padgett, T. M. 1991. The identification, distribution, and status of 



the threatened Dismal Swamp Shrew {Sorex longirostris fisheri). 



M.S. Thesis, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. 

 Pagels, J. F. 1987. The pygmy shrew, rock shrew, and water shrew: 



Virginia's rarest shrews (Mammalia: Soricidae). Virginia Journal 



of Science 38(4):364-368. 

 Webster, Wm. D. 1987. Sorex hoyi winnemana. Pages 40-41 in 



Endangered, threatened, and rare fauna of North Carolina, Part 1. A 



re-evaluation of the mammals (M. K. Clark, editor). Occasional Papers 



of the North Carolina Biological Survey. 1987-3. North Carolina 



State Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh. 

 Webster, Wm. D., J. F. Parnell, and W. C Biggs, Jr. 1985. Mammals 



of the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland. University of North Carolina 



Press, Chapel Hill. 



Received 1 June 1993 

 Accepted 30 July 1993 



