'86 PROCEEDIXaS OF TJfE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol. xxvm. 



were forwarded to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington some 

 forty years ago. From the published records of arotic exph)ration, 

 there can be little doubt that at least two species of lemnnngs are 

 comparatively abundant, even at the highest attained latitude, at 

 many points of the northern polar lands of the Dominion of Canada 

 visited by the various ship expeditions. 



On Baring Island, Doctor Armstrong found them numerous in many 

 localities, at most periods of each season, and also in large numbers on 

 the ice during the spring thaws. He also knew them to prey on each 

 other, has himself partaken of their flesh, and thought it delicately nice 

 and tender. He wn-ites that the female lemming produces from two 

 to six at a birth. 8ir Edward Parry found two species of lemming 

 equally abundant on Melville Island; he gives the number of young 

 as varying between four and eight. A female captured in 1820 had 

 four hi vfcro. On July 12, he discov(>red a nest containing six blind, 

 naked, and helpless little ones, which grew so rapidly that they were 

 able to quit it ten days later. Lemmings subsist on the products of 

 the soil, such as dry dwarf willow, grasses, etc. Sir James Clark 

 Ross states that lemmings were very abundant in Boothia, and he 

 also confirms the above ))irth references from his observation. C cap- 

 tain Markham, of Sir George Nares' expedition, met with lenmiings 

 on his North Pole expedition of 1875-76, while (leneral Greely found 

 them in large numl)ers on (xrinnell Land, as far north as latitude 

 83*^ 24' north. Eight examples were secured by his party during their 

 sta}' in that quarter. They live in comfortable nests, composed of dry 

 grasses, in holes in the ground, with two entrances to each. Sir John 

 Ross found the skeleton of a lemming on an ice floe 60 miles north of 

 Spit/bergen, in 1827. 



HUDSON BAY LEMMING. 



I)irro»t(ii)il.r ricliiir(lf<0)il IMerriam. 



This species is decidedly more abundant than Leinmiistriniiicronatus 

 in Arctic America. A considerable luunber of skins w^as collected in 

 various conditions of pelage from midsummer to midwinter, not only 

 in the vicinity of Fort Anderson, but also from the lower Anderson 

 River, the Barren Grounds, and on the coast shores of Liverpool and 

 Franklin bays. Two females secured in the "Barrens'' on June 26, 

 1865, each contained five end^ryos, while a few days later (June 30) a 

 dead male example, perfectly white, was discovered in the nest of a 

 golden eagle, 2 or 3 miles to the west of our usual summer crossing of 

 the Wilmot Horton River. 



