MIGRATION 



But a strange impetus then possesses them, and in 

 the dark (if we may be permitted to continue our 

 simile) we would see the fields and woods aglow 

 with the swiftly accumulating instinct. The passion 

 of migration descends upon them, and in solid pha- 

 lanxes, in crowded mats and roads of life the lem- 

 ming host sets forth. All appetite is left behind, and 

 while on the march the most succulent food is passed 

 by. On and on they go, fording rivers, trampling 

 crops, regardless of the owls, weasels, hawks and 

 foxes harrying their flanks, paying no attention to 

 the guns and clubs of the men whom they encounter. 

 Thousands of them live to reach the outermost 

 beach, and like the tropical butterflies, they press 

 on, fighting their way through the surf, thrown 

 back in windrows of drowned. Ferocious fish replace 

 their enemies of the air and land, until, swimming 

 on and on, the last pitiful gasp is given far from 

 land, and the ultimate lemming sinks slowly 

 through the water of the open sea. Another lem- 

 ming migration is over. 



I think the most spectacular migration in the 

 world, combining the characters of those of the 

 Arctic tern and the lemming, is the single great 

 journey of the common eel. After a decade or more 

 spent in some inland lake or far up near the head- 

 waters of a river, all the adult eels of the same age 

 descend to the ocean — eels of the Hudson, Poto- 

 mac, St. Lawrence, Elbe, Rhine, Loire — all seek 

 the Atlantic and traverse many hundreds of miles 

 of its waters to the southwest part of the Sargasso 



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