Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/535

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Trapping Shrews and Voles.—One is usually led to suppose that the Pigmy Shrew, Sorex minutus, is a scarce species in the South of England. It may consequently be of interest to put on record the capture by myself of a couple of specimens at Combe Martin, in North Devonshire, last September. I have also on previous occasions taken it at Southerndown, in Glamorganshire, in August, and in Leigh Woods, Somersetshire, in mid-winter. It is of course not to be supposed that the species is comparable in frequency of occurrence with the larger species, Sorex araneus. Perhaps on an average indeed only ten per cent. of the Shrews captured by myself have been Pigmies. But it by no means follows that a species of mammal is scarce because it is hard to trap or rarely seen. Take, for example, the case of our two small Voles, Microtus agrestis and M. glareolus. A few years back it was the custom to publish the capture of every specimen of the latter, and record it as "new to the county." Yet nothing, I take it, is more certain than that the species is, and always has been—at least since historic times—abundant everywhere throughout Great Britain. I myself have caught it night after night in numbers in the counties of Glamorgan, Gloucester, Somerset, Devon, and Dorset. It even outdoes Mus sylvaticus in obtrusiveness. But with the Field Vole it is far otherwise. I have trapped it, it is true, but only at rare intervals, and, so to speak, by chance; that is to say, the specimens were found in the traps, either snapped by the hind quarters or lying in some other position, showing equally clearly that their capture was due to pure bad luck, like an accidental dart into the trap, and not to any eagerness after the bait. In fact, at a rough estimate I should compute that in the case of these two species the percentage of agrestis captured had not been higher than five; yet this is not attributable to any scarcity on the part of agrestis, nor to trapping in unfavourable localities. Traps have been set in their runs in the green fields, and even close to the nest containing young, but without success. Nevertheless the species is probably abundant everywhere in meadows and hay-fields, not to mention hedges and banks, where I have myself seen it. The same may be the case with the Pigmy Shrew. It may be as abundant as S. araneus, but harder to trap. The small amount of experience I have had of the species lends some support to this supposition, for in at least two cases I clearly recollect that the speci-