LEMMING REMAINS IN SOUTH-EAST SCOTLAND 99 



of the Water of Leith Purification Scheme, in the early 

 nineties, placed a sewer alongside of the " stank." The 

 cutting for this sewer was about twenty feet in depth, the 

 various lake-deposits being thus exposed. Below the shell- 

 marls, at depths varying from six or seven feet to the bottom of 

 the cutting, was the Arctic plant drift-bed, in which the remains 

 of Arctic willows and other plants, and of the highly interest- 

 ing fresh-water crustacean Apus glacialis, were present in 

 abundance. It was in material from this drift-bed that the 

 bones of the small rodents were found by Bennie in the 

 beginning of 1892, after much laborious washing and sifting. 

 I may say that I visited the locality myself during the sewer 

 operations and saw part of this interesting lake-deposit. 

 The Arctic willows, etc., would, no doubt, grow on the 

 adjoining knolls and hillside, and there, too, the Lemming 

 would have its home. 



In England and Ireland, bones of Lemmings have been 

 recorded from the following places : Fissures near Ightham, 

 Kent; caves in Somerset; Langwith Cave, Derbyshire; cave 

 in the Wye Valley, Gloucester ; Dog Holes, Warton Crag, 

 Lancashire ; the Doneraile Cave, Co. Clare ; etc. (cf. E. T. 

 Newton, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1., p. 188, 1894; M. A. C. 

 Hinton, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, vi., p. 34, 1910; J. W. 

 Jackson, Lanes. Nat., February 1910, and March 1912 ; etc.). 

 Until quite recently, Lemming remains in this country 

 were looked upon as belonging to two existing species, 

 the Norwegian Lemming (Lcmmus Icmmus) and the Arctic 

 Lemming {Dicrostonyx torquatus). In the light, however, 

 of recent specialisation in the study of Mammals, it 

 appears that remains of true torquatus x which now exists 

 only in Russia east of the White Sea, and Siberia 

 have not been proved to occur here. Bones of so-called 

 torquatus from Ightham, etc., examined by Hinton arc re- 

 ferred by him to an extinct species to which he (Joe. cit.) 

 has given the name Dicrostonyx henseli. To another extinct 

 form, D. guliclmi (Sanford), belong, according to the same 

 authority, bones from the Somerset and other caves. 



1 This is the Siberian form as distinguished from D. grcrtihunlicus of 

 Greenland, D. hudsonius and others of North America. 



