Shrew
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Shrew. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the general name of a family including the smallest quadrupeds known. The shrews resemble mice in general appearance but are not related to them. The shrews are rather smaller, and have pointed muzzles. They have sharp teeth and are related to the moles. Their natural food is insects, rarely seeds or grain. The common shrew of North America was called moon-eater by the Indians, from a legendary belief that the shrew with its little nose attacked the full moon and ate it away by degrees, until, when the old moon was all consumed, a new moon grew in its place. The shrew is active all winter. There are numerous species, both in the New World and in the Old. England has three; the Alps, one. There are thirty-five species between the Mexican border and the Arctic Ocean. Shrews feed at night. A pair of shrews will soon clear a house of cockroaches. Shrews are quarrelsome to a fault, and are noted fighters; hence the term shrewish applied to a quarrelsome person. Of late the word is applied to women only. The adjective shrewd is in better standing. Shrews are killed by cats, possibly under the supposition that they are mice, but a strong musky odor prevents the cat from eating a shrew. Owls, hawks, weasels, and shrikes make no distinction between a shrew and a mouse. See Hedgehog Wood shrew. House shrew. Water shrew. Insectivorous animals Flying-lemur. Insectivorous animals European mole. Insectivorous animals
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in zoölogy, a popular name for any individual of the Soricidæ, particularly the common (Sorex vulgaris) and the lesser shrew (S. pygmæus). The former is about the size of a mouse, which it somewhat resembles, but has the muzzle produced, with prominent nostrils, far beyond the lip; the eyes are scarcely discernible through the fur; ears wide and short; the tail is four-sided, with the angles rounded off; fur usually reddishgray above, grayish beneath, but the color varies. They feed on insects and worms and the smaller mollusca; they are extremely pugnacious, and two males scarcely ever meet without a battle, when the weaker is killed and eaten. They breed in the spring; the female makes a nest of dry herbage in a hole in the ground, and brings forth from five to seven young, but their increase is checked by the weasel and barn owl.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The basic natural history holds up: shrews are still tiny, insect-eating, fiercely pugnacious, and still preyed on by owls and weasels. But the classification has been rebuilt — Aiton's 1910 grouping of shrews with hedgehogs, moles and the "flying-lemur" as Insectivora has been abandoned, since the colugo turned out to be a close relative of primates, and shrews now sit with moles and hedgehogs in the order Eulipotyphla, with over 400 species named worldwide rather than the few dozen counted here. Collier's Sorex vulgaris of 1921 is now Sorex araneus, and it proved to be a complex of populations differing in chromosome arrangement. Two discoveries would have astonished both writers: some shrews echolocate with ultrasonic clicks, the American short-tailed shrew has venomous saliva, and shrews actually shrink their skulls and brains over winter and regrow them in spring — Dehnel's phenomenon, described in 1949 and confirmed by modern imaging.
Written for this edition, 2026.