TEE NORWEGIAN LEMMING. 407 



like eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and tbe teeth shone 

 wliite in the sunliglit. I hastily snatched at the savage little creat- 

 ure, but it sprang completely round, fastened its teeth sharply in my 

 hand, and taking advantage of my surprise escaped under a large 

 stone, whence I could not dislodge it. A Norwegian friend who ac- 

 companied me by no means shared my feelings of satisfaction at the 

 sight of a lemming. " We shall have a severe winter and no grass 

 next spring, owing to those children of Satan ! " was his comment on 

 the event. However, it was many a month before I saw another; 

 then, on lifting a flat stone, I found six in a nest of dried grass, blind, 

 and apparently but just born. In a few days the whole fjeld became 

 swarming with these pretty voles ; at the same time white and blue 

 foxes made their appearance, and snowy owls and many species of 

 hawks became abundant. My dogs, too, were annoyed by the rash 

 courage of the new-comers, which would jump at their noses even 

 when slowly drawing on game, so that they never spared a lemming, 

 though they never ate them till last year, when I observed that they 

 would eat their heads only, rejecting the body, although they de- 

 voured the common field-mouse to the end of his tail. As the season 

 advanced and snow covered the gi'ound, the footprints and headless 

 carcasses told plainly how hard it must be for a lemming to preserve 

 its life, although there can be no doubt that its inherent pugnacity is 

 its worst enemy. In this country we fail to conceive how much active 

 life goes on beneath the snow, which in more northern latitudes forms 

 a warm roof to numerous birds, quadrupeds, and insects, which are 

 thus enabled to secure an otherwise impossible sustenance. At the 

 same time, as I have already noticed, a fearful struggle for existence 

 is carried on during the long autumnal nights, before the snow has be- 

 come a protection rather than a new source of danger to all save pre- 

 daceous animals. It was a curious sight, when the whole visible 

 landscape was an unbroken whiteness, to see a dark form suddenly 

 spring from the surface and scurry over the snow, and again vanish. 

 I found that some of the holes by means of which this feat was exe- 

 cuted were at least five feet in depth, yet even here was no safety, for 

 the reindeer often kill the lemmings by stamping on them, though I 

 do not believe their bodies are ever eaten. 



During the autumn I noticed no migration, or rather there was 

 only an immigration from some point to the eastward, and in the sub- 

 sequent migrations of 1870-'7l, and 1875-"76, I still found the same 

 state of things. The animals arrived during early autumn, and im- 

 mediately began to breed ; there was no procession, no serried 

 bands undeterred by obstacles, but there was an invasion of tem- 

 porary settlers, which were speedily shut out from human view 

 by the snow, and it was not till the following summer that the 

 army, reenforced by five or six generations, went out to perish like 

 the hosts of Pharaoh. On calm mornings my lake, which is a mile 



