74 
MAMMALIA. 
an exhausted state, making a few ineffectual efforts to twist his body, 
while the Blarina was busy tearing out his masseter and temporal 
muscles. A large part of the flesh was eaten from his tail, and the 
temporal and masseter muscles and eye of one side, were removed, 
so that the under jaw hung loose. The temporal was torn loose 
from the cranium on the other side, and as I watched him the Blarina 
cut the other side of the mandible loose, and began to tear the 
longicolli and rectus muscles. His motions were quite frantic, and 
he jerked and tore out considerable fragments with his long anterior 
teeth. He seemed especially anxious to get down the snake’s throat 
(where some of his kin had probably ‘ gone before ), and revolved 
on his long axis, now with his belly up, now with his sides, in his 
energetic efforts. He had apparently not been bitten by the snake, 
and was uninjured. Whether the shrew killed the snake is of course 
uncertain, but the animus with which he devoured the reptile gives 
some color to the suspicion that he in some way frightened him to 
exhaustion.” 
The Shrew is rarely eaten by birds or beasts of prey, but is 
usually left where killed, which fact is doubtless due to the offensive 
odor from its scent glands. That it is sometimes eaten appears 
from the fact that a disgorged pellet from some bird of prey, found 
in the Catskills by Mr. E. P. Bicknell and Dr. A. K. Fisher, contained 
the recognizable remains of this species.* 
The Short-tailed Shrew is readily taken in an ordinary mouse-trap, 
baited with meat, set near the mouth of a burrow. I have caught 
many in this way. 
I am not aware that anything has been published relating to its 
breeding habits, and the only facts that I can contribute are in regard 
to the time when its young are produced. On the 2 2d of April, 
1878, I found a couple of these Shrews under a plank- walk near my 
museum. They proved to be male and female, and the latter con- 
tained young which, from their size, would probably have been born 
* Bicknell in Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. I, 1882, p. 122. 
