What is this little mouse-like thing in the grass? how quickly it runs. Now I have got him. No! off again; burrowing under the grass-roots. Now I have him safe enough; he cannot bite me with this glove on. Look at the little rogue, with his soft short silky fur and long nose. See how flexible that pointed nose is; how useful in grubbing amongst the closest herbage, or under the surface of the soil. How sharp are the little creature's teeth. With them he eats worms and the larvae of various kinds of insects. Well, what is its name? It is the common shrew, and though the form of the body is mouse-shaped, it is, properly speaking, not a mouse at all, being much more nearly related to the mole. It is said that shrews are very fond of fighting, and that if two be confined together in a box, the stronger will conquer the weaker and then eat him. Moles are said to eat their small relatives, but I have never had any evidence of the fact, though it is probable enough. May wanted to know whether cats eat shrews. I have often tried cats with dead shrews, and have always found they will not touch them. I dare say, however, they would kill them. The smell of the shrew is certainly unpleasant, as you may find out from this little fellow I hold in my hand. Mind he does not bite your nose. Now we have examined him I shall let him go. It is no pleasure to take an animal's life, and as this little shrew does no harm but good by destroying insect larvae, it would be a shame to hurt him. Where injurious creatures must be killed, let us always be careful to take away life so as to cause the least possible pain. Now, would any of you have ever thought that the little shrew I have just released had ever been supposed to be one of the most dangerous enemies to cattle? This was really once believed by our ancestors, who thought that a shrew, by running over the backs of cattle, made them weak in the loins, and that its bite made a beast swell at the heart and die. Absurd as was the belief, the supposed cure for the injury was, if possible, still more ridiculous. It consisted in passing over the cow's back the twigs of a shrew ash. "Now a shrew ash," says Gilbert White, "is an ash whose twigs or branches when applied to the limbs of cattle will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected, for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew ash at hand which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew ash was made thus: into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in,