58 
NATURE’S CRAFTSMEN: 
gument about it. I suppose the boy thinks now 
he has some real proof of Jim’s usefulness. Ha! 
Ha!” 
“ Poor Tommy! ” said Alice, but she laughed 
too. “ Maybe Daddy Thornton will know what 
the creature is,” she suggested then. 
4 4 1 think I can set your mind at rest on that 
score,” Grandfather returned, removing his 
glasses to wipe away the mist his hearty laughter 
had called forth. 44 It was the short-tailed mole 
or shrew. There are some thirty-five species of 
shrews, I believe. Most of them grub about 
among the roots of herbage in the gardens, fields 
and woods, making runways beneath fallen leaves 
and hiding in old stumps and under rotting logs. 
They eat various insects, caterpillars, and earth¬ 
worms, and are useful aids for the gardener. The 
long-tailed shrew mouse which lives in the marsh 
is the nursery bugaboo of our dainty little song¬ 
sters, the marsh wrens. The mole shrew is the 
only one of the family that forces its way through 
the loose top-soil like a mole. He, too, does not 
hesitate to dine on birdlings. In spring, the 
males are particularly pugnacious, and often 
fight to the death. We may find the body of the 
vanquished one in the garden path, but we seldom 
stumble upon the contestants, as they are noc¬ 
turnal creatures, and do not usually venture far 
abroad until man is safe in bed. They form the 
