254 
SILVERY SHREW-MOLE. 
Before we take leave of the Shrew-Moles of our country, we have to add 
that Richardson (F. B. A. p. 12), in noticing the assertion of Bartram, 
that a true mole, Talpa, existed in America (in which he was supposed by 
later writers to be mistaken), asserts that there are several true moles in 
the museum of the Zoological Society of London, which were brought from 
America, and which differ from the ordinary European species ( Talpa 
Europea), in being of a smaller size and having a shorter and thicker snout, 
their fur being brownish-black. DeKay, in the Natural History of New 
York (p. 16), refers to the above statement. We however examined these 
specimens in the Zoological Museum, and found they consisted of only tw o 
species — our common Scalops aquaticus, which Richardson strangely mis- 
took for another species, and Scalops Breweri, to which he particularly 
referred. Thus far therefore no true specimen of the genus Talpa has been 
discovered in America, and we have no doubt that the species referred tc 
by Bartram as the black mole was Brewer's Shrew-Mole, which in certain 
lights appears quite black. 
