HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-G OSSIF. 



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NOTES ON THE LEMMING. 

 By John- Wager. 



[Continued from p. 233-] 



IN 1SS1 I travelled in a northerly and north- 

 westerly direction across Dalecarlia, Helsingland, 

 Jemtland, and Angermanland, to Svanas, near 

 Withelmina, in the south-western part of Swedish 

 Lapland ; and thence eastward, through Asele to 

 Nordmaling, near Urmea, on the Bothnian Gulf, 

 without seeing a single lemming, though on much 

 of the route the almost continuous forests were inter- 

 sected only by foot-tracks. Nor could I learn much 

 about them on the way ; at Sore, for instance, a 

 person of whom I inquired, could only say, that on 

 their occasional visits they came from the west and 

 moved eastward — whence or whither was unknown ; 

 none, however, had been seen there for years. At 

 Gissekls, farther north, the landlord said they ap- 

 peared perhaps once in about ten years ; where they 

 came from was quite uncertain — he supposed from 

 the mountains. Even the Lapp woman who presided 

 over a kata, in which I spent a night and day, upon 

 the brow of the Blajk-fjeld, could give information 

 scarcely more reliable. Lemmings, she said, had 

 been seen on the fjelds two years since ; where they 

 had come from she did not know, but believed it 

 was either from the sea or the upper air ! A boat- 

 man also who rowed me down the Angerman river 

 to Stensek said there had been lemmings in the 

 neighbourhood some time since, but they had then 

 "flitted." They were seen at intervals on the fjelds, 

 and came there, he also supposed, from the sea ! 



On the second tour, in 1883, through the same 

 tract of Lapland I entered it by tracing upwards 

 from Hernosand, on the Bothnian Gulf, the course 

 cf the noble river Angerman to its source in the 

 great Malgom'aj and Kult lakes — ascending to the 

 head of the latter, among the mountains which form 

 the broad boundary line between Sweden and 

 Norway. So far I did not meet with a single 

 lemming ; but here, as at Wilhelmina, I was told they 

 make their appearance in the valleys at intervals 

 varying from two or three to six and even ten years ; 

 often their numbers are not very remarkable, but 

 occasionally the predatory mountaineers descend in 

 hordes which eat up all the grass, till, as a peasant 

 expressed it, the ground looks swart. They are 

 called, he said, the " land's plague ; "when numerous 

 the reindeer eat them, and contract thereby a sickness 

 termed " renurina ; " sometimes you may find multi- 

 tudes of them upon the mountains, at other times 

 none ; and they migrate, he said, in different directions, 

 at one time into Norway, at another into the Swedish 

 dales. From Klimpen, at the head of the Kult lake, 

 I walked across the wild and desolate tract which lies 

 between the last house in Sweden and the first in Nor- 

 way, a distance of about thirty-five miles of wilderness 



totally uninhabited, except by the wandering Lap- 

 landers, who pitch their tents in its elevated valleys and 

 upon its mountain sides ; how in one place and now in 

 another, to suit the requirements of their reindeer 

 herds. During this march twice or thrice I startled 

 a lemming, usually among covert of creeping black 

 birch or other bosky ground ; and several times I 

 heard, without seeing them, the shrill scream of 

 others ; but evidently they were not numerous, 

 though no doubt this tract is one of their normal 

 haunts. After entering Norway and descending to 

 Kroken in Susendal, Helgeland, I had still eighty- 

 four miles to traverse before reaching the coast at 

 Vefsen. On this route, which was chiefly through 

 forest, while walking one of the rather frequent 

 stages where no carriage road existed, I met with a 

 solitary lemming on a grassy slope in Hatfjeldalen, 

 and supposed this elevated valley to be one of their 

 usual resorts, but was afterwards told that such was 

 not the case ; that the lemming I had seen pertained 

 to a swarm which had been there in the earlier part 

 of the summer, it being now the, third of July. In 

 1884 also I had a tolerably wide range through the 

 forests and over the snow-patched mountains and 

 bosky, morassy hollows of south Swedish Lapland, 

 bordering upon Norway, and from thence to 

 Ostersund in Jemtland, without seeing any lemmings, 

 except the bodies of a few, at Fatmomak, which had 

 evidently been dead a considerable time, having been 

 trampled upon till they were dry and flat as mere 

 skins. 



The habitat of the lemming, according to Schjoth's 

 " Geographisk Beskrivelse over Kongeriget Norge," 

 is the birch and willow region of the mountains ; and 

 a Swedish friend, resident in the south of Lapland, 

 informs me that the usual haunt or home of the 

 lemming is some moderately dry place in the 

 neighbourhood of the fens and morasses with which 

 the Lapland mountain-tracts so greatly abound. As 

 before said, I first saw them, and in numbers ex- 

 ceeding any I have seen elsewhere, upon the high 

 table-land between Loerdalsoren and Urland ; a 

 desolate region of ruggedly undulating ground and 

 cragged precipitous hills ; white almost everywhere 

 with infinitude of blanched stones ; treeless, and in 

 many parts almost devoid of any vegetation except 

 purple lichens ; but producing also grass and low 

 herbage of other kinds. Being quite new to me they 

 added greatly to the interest of my lonely walk, 

 affording ample opportunity for observing their 

 personal appearance and behaviour. The lemming 

 is about five inches in length, exclusive of the tail, 

 which is not more, and frequently less, than half an 

 inch long ; the legs too are very short — the fore-legs 

 about half an inch, and the hind ones not more than 

 one inch in length. The feet are furnished with 

 claws. Its fur is fine, soft and close, but not, as I 

 saw it in summer, very thick ; in colour, brownish - 

 yellow, or dull orange, at the sides, becoming 



