384. MURIDAZ—MICROTIN 4 
from Britain, the Ultima Thule of their wanderings, must be 
regarded as due solely to local causes, perhaps connected with 
the latest Glacial Period, or to the competition in large numbers 
of the more highly organised Mzvzde. Having been exter- 
minated in Western Europe, they were unable to return to 
Britain in time to reoccupy it. The absence of the Hamster, 
Cricetus cricetus (Linnzus),’ from Skandinavia, Denmark, Britain, 
the Iberian Peninsula and Italy, marks the present stock as being 
recent immigrants to the rest of Europe; the immigration is 
perhaps still in progress, the species having much extended 
its range in France since 1870 (see 4 travers le monde, v., 41, 
14th October 1899, 325-326). | 
Sub-family Microtine.’ 
VOLES AND LEMMINGS. 
The classification of this sub-family is largely due to Miller, 
and is a natural system in contradiction to the artificial 
arrangements of most previous investigators—de Sélys, 
Blasius, Fatio, Baird, Coues, Blanford, and Lataste; for 
references to the works of whom, and for further technical 
details, see Miller’s ‘‘Genera of Voles and Lemmings,” being 
North Amer. Fauna, No. 12, 1898; also Hinton’s “ Preliminary 
Account of the British Fossil Voles and Lemmings,” in Prec. 
Geol. Assoc., 3rd June 1910, 489-507. 
Characters :—These rodents are all burrowers, more or less 
completely adapted to an earthbound or even a subterranean 
existence, and therefore lacking the variety of shape and habits 
which is so prominent a feature of the Cricetine and Murine. 
Their eyes are usually-small, and their external ears reduced in 
size. 
In the skeleton the pubic symphysis is greatly shortened. 
In accordance with the diet of coarse and tough vegetable 
1 The report of its naturalisation in South Ronaldshay, Orkneys, “having been 
brought there in a Norway vessel, which suffered shipwreck,” was shown by John 
Wolley (Zoologist, 1849, 2344) to be an error, perhaps based on the known presence 
of Epimys rattus. 
2 Arvicoline of many older writers. 
3 “Temming,” from the Swedish and Norwegian, probably =“‘ destroying.” 
