1874.] Lemming -remains in England. 365 



Mr. Busk, there occurs (p. 556) : " 16. Lagomys spelceus. Lemming : . 1." 

 This is throughout the " Eeport " treated as an original discovery, 

 the importance of which is impressed upon the Royal Society by the 

 remark : " This circumstance tends to give a greater antiquity to a por- 

 tion of the smaller remains than from their condition and position we 

 might have been disposed to assign to them" (ib. p. 560, note). These 

 remains are referred to " the smaller common rodents now living in this 

 country," viz. " Hare, Rabbit, Water-rats/' " at least two species of Arvi- 

 cola" (ib. p. 548). 



The supposed existence of remains of a Grisly Bear in the Brixham 

 Cave (Mr. Busk having " reason to believe that bear-remains referred 

 to Ursus prisons belong in fact to Ursus ferooc " an " important deter- 

 mination") leads to the remark : " The presence of another small North- 

 American animal has been ascertained, viz. the Lemming" (ib. p. 556). 



At the date of publication of my ' British Fossil Mammals,' it is true 

 that no fossil evidence of a Lemming (Georychus, Illiger ; Lemmus, Link) 

 had come to my knowledge ; but I have since obtained such of species 

 of both fipermophilus and Georychus, the latter nearly allied to, if not 

 identical with, the Siberian Lemming (Georychus aspalaoc), from a deposit 

 of lacustrine brick-earth near Salisbury, associated with Elephas primi- 

 genius. The Lemmings, I may remark, belong to the family of "Voles" 

 (Arvicolidce), not of "Hares" (Leporidce); but the fossil from "the sur- 

 face of the cave-earth far in the Reindeer gallery " of the Brixham Cave 

 (Report, p. 558) appears from the figures (plate xlvi. figs. 12, 13) to 

 be rightly referred to Lagomys, and to the same species determined 

 and named (p. 213, figs. 82, 83, 84) in the ' British Fossil Mammals ' 

 (1846). The specimen submitted to me by Dr. Buckland was found 

 by the Rev. Mr. M'Enery in Kent's Hole, Torquay, and includes a 

 larger proportion of the skull than the specimen figured in the "Report" 

 from the Brixham Cave. It is evidently a Pika, or tailless Hare, not a 

 Lemming. And the determination of the original or first evidence of 

 Lagomys spelceus, now in the British Museum, led me also to remark : 

 " None of the circumstances attending its discovery, nor any character 

 deducible from its colour or chemical state, indicate it to be an older 

 fossil than the jaws and teeth of the Hares, Rabbits, Field-voles, or 

 Water-voles already described ; yet it unquestionably attests the former 

 existence in England of a species of rodent, whose genus not only is 

 unrepresented at the present day in our British fauna, but has long 

 ceased to exist in any part of the Continent of Europe " (' British Fossil 

 Mammals,' p. 213). The Lemmings still disturb, by their multitudinous 

 migratory swarms, the husbandmen of Scandinavia. 



