COMMON SHREW — LESSER SHREW. 
13 
Harley wrote: — “Buff and white, or parti- coloured individuals occasionally 
occur,” although a Mole-catcher of more than fifty years’ experience once told him 
that he had never met with any such varieties. One in the Museum is labelled 
‘ From Belvoir. Mr. Jno. Eyder.” This specimen I find noted in the old 
MS. Donation-book as being presented on 25th April, 1862. It is of a uniform 
cream-colour, inclining to feri’uginous on the limbs. The Kev. A. JMatthews, of 
Gumley, shewed me one precisely similar, caught by a Mole-catcher in an 
adjoining parish during the .first week of June, 1884, the man stating at the 
time that he had met with several other examples during the course of his 
trapping. This specimen was recorded in the ‘Zoologist’ for 1884, page 271. 
Curiously enough, Mr. Matthews procured another on 20th March, 1885, which 
had been caught in a trap at Laughton Hills. He describes it as being the 
handsomest he ever saw, a large male of an amber colour, with the nose white 
nearly to the eyes, cheeks and back of the head and neck bright orange. Mr. 
Ingram sent one to the Museum, caught in Barkstone Wood, Belvoir, on 10th June, 
1887, and precisely similar to the one sent from the same locality twenty-five 
years previously. I saw, in the hands of Pinchen, the taxidermist of Church- 
gate, Leicester, a similar variety taken at Ansty in December, 1887 ; and 
Mr. John Burgess, of Saddington, presented to the IMuseum a very fine one 
which was caught there on 10th March, 1888. This specimen is also like the 
others, but rather more reddish-orange on its ventral aspect. It would thus 
appear that there is a constant variety of the Mole, in which part of the head 
and the joints of the limbs are ferruginous, and the remainder of the body 
cream-coloured. 
Family SOEICID^. 
COMMON SHREW. Sorex vulgaris, Linnaeus. 
Resident and generally distributed. — Harley remarked upon the great 
numbers found dead every autumn, in pathways near farms and outbuildings 
— a fact well known, but which has not yet, I believe, been satisfactorily 
explained. 
Mr. W. Whitaker, Wistow Grange, wrote me in September, 1885: — “A 
man named Storer has a white Shrew, killed at IMarket Bosworth.” 
LESSER SHREW. Sorex minutus, Linnaeus. 
Although I have never met with this species, it probably occurs in the 
counties, and, as it may be so easily confounded with the Common Shrew, 
the following distinguishing characteristic, from Bell’s ‘ British Quadrupeds,’ — 
which Mr. Oldfield Thomas, F.Z.S., of the Natural History Museum, South 
Kensington, tells me is to be relied upon — may prove of service : — In this 
species the fifth pointed tooth in upper jaw is in the same line as the pre- 
ceding ones, and is distinctly visible externally. In the commoner species, on 
