IVONSUCH 



a hope, a fighting chance of returning to its birth- 

 place, but not so the hordes of butterflies and lem- 

 mings. I have stood on the shore of the sea and 

 watched thousands upon hundreds of thousands of 

 yellow butterflies fluttering by, appearing end- 

 lessly over the top of the jungle, drifting like volant 

 autumn leaves down river courses, and without an 

 instant of hesitation, passing out over the line of 

 breakers, beyond the emerald shallows, to disappear 

 on the horizon between sky and deep sea — not one 

 ever to return. The puzzle is no nearer to solution 

 when we capture one, a dozen, a thousand, and find 

 them all males ; not a single female butterfly among 

 all the mad host of suicides. 



A small colony of lemmings — those little furry 

 rodents of Scandinavia — is the most static com- 

 munity imaginable. The little chaps hop in and out 

 of their burrows, and alternately sleep the hours 

 away or nibble eternally at grass blades. Now and 

 then a litter of four or five young appears. After 

 several years of apparently uneventful, idyllic life, 

 even during a cold or rainy year, the younger gen- 

 erations apparently refuse to die from the usual 

 natural causes. They breed sooner than is the cus- 

 tom, after a few months of life, and the litters in- 

 crease to nine or ten. The warren swarms with 

 lemmings of all ages, and whole generations — 

 especially of the young males — begin to push down 

 the mountain slopes and river valleys. 



At first the extension is gradual and is slowed up 

 or stopped when areas of rich pasture are reached. 



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