Our Common Shrew is a pretty little mouse-like creature (its figure will be seen in [Plate 12]), measuring about two inches and three-quarters in length, with a tail rather more than an inch and a half long. Its fur is generally of a reddish-grey colour above, and greyish beneath; but the colour varies considerably, being sometimes blackish or chestnut above, and tinged with yellow beneath. The fore teeth are of a rich brown colour. The tail is four-sided,[281] with the angles rounded off, and is nearly of equal thickness throughout; it is covered with short, close, stiffish hairs. Mr. Bell states that the Shrew sometimes occurs spotted with white, and that he possesses one specimen “which is beautifully pied, having a broad white band over the loins, which extends all round the animal.”
DENTITION OF
COMMON SHREW.
The food of the Common Shrew consists chiefly of insects and worms, but it also eats the smaller mollusca, and even the common Slug (Limax agrestis), according to Mr. Bell, who says that he has not only found the remains of that animal in its stomach, but has also fed it upon slugs in confinement. Like its ally, the Mole, it is very pugnacious, and two Shrews rarely come together without a battle, when the weaker one is killed and eaten. The breeding season of the Shrew is in the spring, when the female makes a comfortable nest of soft dry herbage in some convenient hole in the ground, and there brings forth from five to seven young ones. Their increase is checked to a certain extent by natural enemies. Thus, the Mole is said to kill and eat them when they come in his way; and Cats, Weasels, Owls, and some other animals, will also kill them; and some at least do not disdain to make a meal upon them. The Barn Owl especially seems to make great havoc among the Shrews.
All sorts of evil qualities were attributed to the Shrew by our ancestors, some of which are still believed in. One old writer says that the Shrew-mouse is “a kind of Field-mouse of the bigness of a Rat and colour of a Weasel, very mischievous to cattel; which, going over a beast’s back, will make it lame in the chine; and the bite of it causes the beast to swell at the heart and die.” The running of a Shrew over the leg of a beast was generally believed to cause the latter great pain, and to produce lameness. The proper cure for these imaginary ills was on a par with the mischief; the remedy was the application to the part affected of a branch or twig of a shrew-ash, which, says Gilbert White, “was made thus: into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted Shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt with several quaint incantations since forgotten.”
There is one circumstance in the natural history of the Shrew that must have struck everybody, although it is still entirely unexplained. This is the death of great numbers of these animals in autumn without any apparent cause. Residents in the country will know that at that season Shrews may be seen lying dead on almost every footpath; in fact, the observation is so general as to have given rise to another superstition, namely, that a Shrew cannot cross a public path without paying the penalty of death. The individuals thus found dead are of both sexes, and of various ages.
The Common Shrew occurs not only in the British Islands, but also over the whole continent of Europe, from Sweden and Russia to the shores of the Mediterranean.
The Lesser Shrew (Sorex pygmæus, whose figure will be seen in [Plate 12]) is a second British species nearly allied to the preceding, but smaller, measuring rather less than two inches in length, and with a proportionately longer tail. The lower parts of the body are also whiter. It is the smallest of British Mammals.[282]
DEKAY’S SHREW.[283]
Some small species of American Shrews agree with the restricted genus Sorex in the number of teeth, but have no lobe at the base of the upper incisors; the external ear is small, turned forward, and the tail short, usually not longer than the head. These form the genus Blarina.