Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/455

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Lesser Shrew in Cambridgeshire.— In September, 1899, I obtained two batches of pellets of the Barn-Owl from nesting places in hollow trees at Wisbech St. Mary. They yielded respectively one and four skulls of the Lesser Shrew (Sorex minutus), in addition to remains of the Common Shrew, Water Shrew, Bank, Field, and Water Voles, Long-tailed Field-Mouse, Common Mouse, Brown Rat, and House-Sparrow. The Lesser Shrew, although probably not uncommon, does not appear to have been often noticed in the fens. Jenyns, quoted by Miller and Skertchly in 'The Fenland Past and Present,' says, "I have taken it in a single instance in Horningsea Fen, but not elsewhere."— (Alderley Edge).

Lesser Shrew and Bank Vole in Berks.— In answer to Mr. W.H. Warner's enquiry (ante, p. 381), I am pleased to be able to inform him that the Lesser Shrew (Sorex minutus) is certainly found in this part of Berkshire; I have taken it, but not recently. I much regret I have no skin by me at present. I am not certain about Microtus glareolus. The number of Mus sylvaticus that infests my garden is quite extraordinary; on one small herbaceous border I caught over seven hundred last year. It is almost impossible to grow yellow crocuses, though they are not nearly so hard on the bulbs of other coloured varieties, and never touch narcissus roots.— (Temple Combe, Henley-on-Thames).

Insectivorous Habits of the Long-tailed Field-Mouse.—During the winter months Long-tailed Field-Mice (Mus sylvaticus) resort in numbers to the narrow horizontal tunnels in the sandstone rock connected with the disused copper mines on Alderley Edge. In November, 1898, when I first noticed the Mouse-holes among the heaps of loose stones, and the impressions of multitudes of little feet in the dry sand of the tunnel-floors, I was at a loss to think what had induced the Mice to adopt the life of troglodytes. A feeble light penetrates some of the main tunnels, but in the side workings it is pitch-dark at all times of the day, and here footprints were numerous in places more than a hundred and fifty yards from the outer air. The piles of gnawed hips and blackberry-seeds in birds' nests in