upper canine may not be a fourth incisor, and whether the first premolar may not be really the canine. Another peculiar feature about the dentition of Sorex is the suppression of the teeth of the milk dentition, which are functionless, and probably uncalcified. The genus Sorex is terrestrial. The tail is long and covered with hairs. There are two species in this country, S. vulgaris and S. minutus. The former is the Shrew of legend and superstition; and it is no doubt the species that has lent its name to the more untameable members of the softer sex, though it is the males which are especially pugnacious. As to legend, everybody has heard of the shrew ash whose leaves, after a Shrew has been inserted living into a hole cleft in the tree, are a specific for diseases of cattle, caused by the Shrew itself creeping over them.
The Rev. Edward Topsell, author of The Historie of Four-footed Beastes, who defends his veracity by asserting that he does not write "for the rude and vulgar sort, who being utterly ignorant of the operation of learning, do presently condemne al strange things," says of the Shrew that "it is a ravening beast, feigning itself gentle and tame, but, being touched, it biteth deep and poysoneth deadly. It beareth a cruel minde, desiring to hurt anything, neither is there any creature that it loveth, or it loveth him, because it is feared of all." It is probable that all this rustic feeling is due to the powerful effluvium which the Shrew undoubtedly emits.
S. minutus has the distinction of being the smallest British mammal; it is scarcer than the last. This form is found upon the Alps, as is also the peculiarly Alpine species S. alpinus, which inhabits the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and the Hartz.
Crossopus fodiens, the Water Shrew, has also brown-stained teeth. It is not uncommon in this country, and lives in burrows excavated by the sides of the streams which it affects.
Besides these two genera, Soriculus, Blarina, and Notiosorex have red-tipped teeth. In Crocidura, Myosorex, Diplomesodon, Anurosorex, Chimarrogale, and Nectogale the teeth are white-tipped. These are all the genera of the family allowed by the late Dr. Dobson in a review of that family.[1]
Chimarrogale and Nectogale are aquatic genera. The former
- ↑ "A Synopsis of the Genera of the Family Soricidae," Proc. Zool. Soc. 1890, p. 49.
