The second, or specific, title is (as all specific titles ought to be) derived from the Latin, and refers to the habits of the species. It signifies a digger or burrower, and alludes to its custom of digging burrows in the banks of the brook in which it loves to disport itself, and where it obtains much of its food.
As with other creatures, absolute stillness and silence is required on the part of the observer before the water-shrew will even show itself. Though there may be plenty of the little animals within a few yards, not one will be visible. But in ten minutes or thereabouts the silence will reassure them, and they will make their appearance on the bank.
I have seen them playing with each other on the bank of a rivulet which at that time was so dried up by want of rain that the water was scarcely a foot in width. They were almost within reach of my hand, and could easily have killed one or two with a stick. But as I prefer watching the habits of animals to killing them, they continued their pretty and graceful evolutions undisturbed.
Being sociable little creatures, a single water-shrew is seldom seen, and, if the observer should detect one of the animals, he may be tolerably certain that it will presently be joined by others. They are as playful as kittens, and, in their way, quite as graceful, their lithe bodies and active limbs being able to assume as many varied attitudes as may be seen in a family of kittens at play.
They chase each other over the bank, pretend to fight fiercely, squeaking the while as if wounded to death, just as puppies will do when playing and making believe to be hurt. Then one will jump into the water, and dive, as if to escape, while one or two others will pop in after it, and chase it under water.
Indeed, on the occasion which I have just mentioned, the whole proceedings reminded me forcibly of the games in which the boy swimmers of Oxford were wont to indulge for the best part of a summer’s day.
One of our favourite games was for one to dive into the Cherwell (mostly from the top of a pollard willow), and then for the rest to dive after him, and try to catch him under water before he had swum a certain distance. We used to shriek in our sport quite as much, and as loudly in proportion to our size, as the water-shrew squeaks, and I cannot but think that if any being as much superior to man as man is to the shrew could have watched us, we should have amused him much in the same way that the shrew amuses us.
In his admirable work on the British mammals, Mr. Bell states that the water-shrew will dive into a shallow, rippling stream, and run over the stones, pushing its long snout under them, and turning them over, should they be small, for the sake of dislodging and capturing the fresh-water shrimp (Gammarus), and then carrying it off to the bank and eating it with an audible, crunching sound.
I have not personally observed the creature engaged in this sub-aquatic hunt, though I have often seen it dive, and have been near enough to note its singularly beautiful aspect as it wriggles its irregular way under the surface.
Air is largely entangled among the hairs of its body, the imprisoned bubbles looking just like globules of shining silver. The water-spider, which is also a common though unsuspected inmate of the brook, is adorned in a similar manner when it dives.