Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/683

Rh our hand a little creature of an oddly quaint and old-world appearance, with a coat like velvet, brownish black above and grayish white beneath. But the two ends of him strike us most; a long, pink-tipped snout, and a blunt, four-sided tail." Shrews are accustomed to eating much and often, which doubtless accounts for their dying so speedily when food becomes scarce. The reason why their bodies are seen lying about instead of being devoured by flesh-eating creatures is probably because they secrete a strong scent that does not seem to please the palate of cat or weasel. Cats will catch them to play with, and finally kill them, but will not eat them. Owls eat them, however, and so does the kestrel falcon. On account of this scent, the animal is known in some parts of England by the name of fetid shrew. In Scotland it is called the ranny. The Latin term araneus, or spider-like, has been applied to this creature by several writers, because it was said to bite poisonously like a spider. The body of the shrew is not much over two inches long, and its whole length from the snout to the tip of the tail is about four inches. It lives in little tunnels which it digs in the earth, and which serve also as a hunting-ground. The nest in which the young shrews are brought forth is not made in the burrow, but in some little hollow or a hole in a bank. It is composed of leaves and like substances and is entered by a hole at the side. The young are from five to seven in number, and are generally born in the spring.

The word shrew applied to a scolding woman has a different derivation, according to the dictionaries, from the name of our little insect-hunter. But it is no libel on the animal to give its name to a vixen even of a more unconquerable sort than is represented in Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew," as the following character which Wood gives it abundantly shows:

"Sometimes the shrews mutually kill each other, for they are most pugnacious little beings, and on small ground of quarrel enter into persevering and deadly combats; which, if they took place between larger animals, would be terrifically grand, but in such little creatures appear almost ludicrous. They hold with their rows of bristling teeth with the pertinacity of bull-dogs, and, heedless of everything but the paroxysm of their blind fury, roll