THE WATER SHREW. 
103 
sional resident in our neighborhood was manifest from 
the dead bodies of two or three having occurred in my 
walks ; but it was some time before I discovered a little 
colony of them quietly settled in one of my ponds, 
overshadowed with bushes and foliage. It is very 
amusing to observe the actions of these creatures, all 
life and animation in an element they could not be 
thought any way calculated for enjoying ; but they 
swim admirably, frolicking over the floating leaves of the 
pondweed, and up the foliage of the flags, which, bend- 
ing with their weight, will at times souse them in the 
pool, and away they scramble to another, searching 
apparently for the insects that frequent such places, 
and feeding on drowned moths (phalsena potamogeta) 
and similar insects. They run along the margin of the 
water, rooting amid the leaves and mud with their long 
noses for food, like little ducks, with great earnestness 
and perseverance. Their power of vision seems limited 
to a confined circumference. The smallness of their 
eyes, and the growth of the fur about them, are con- 
venient for the habits of the animal, but impediments 
to extended vision; so that, with caution, we can ap- 
proach them in their gambols, and observe all their ac- 
tions. The general blackness of the body, and the 
triangular spot beneath the tail, as mentioned by Pen- 
nant, afford the best ready distinction of this mouse 
from the common shrew. Both our species of sorex 
seem to feed by preference on insects and worms ; and 
thus, like the mole, their flesh is rank and offensive to 
most creatures, which reject them as food. The common 
shrew, in spring and summer, is ordinarily in motion 
even during the day from the sexual attachment, which 
occasions the destruction of numbers by cats, and other 
prowling animals ; and thus we find them strewed in 
our paths, by gateways, and in our garden walks, 
dropped by these animals in their progress. It was 
once thought that some periodical disease occasioned 
this mortality of the species; but I think we may now 
conclude that violence alone is the cause of their de- 
struction in these instances. The bite of this creature 
was considered by the ancients as peculiarly noxious, 
