3l8 THE ARCTIC MOUSE. 



devastation on their line of march, by the quantities of food 

 they consume." * 



On these occasions, true to their habits of living in 

 the dark beneath the northern snows, they only travel 

 by night ; f and as is usual when any pest appears, they 

 are followed everywhere by crowds of birds and beasts 

 of prey, which reap a rich harvest of food from the 

 ranks of the invading hordes, upon which they live. 

 These swarms of lemmings generally disappear as 

 suddenly as they came, and the Norwegians have a 

 curious legend concerning their disappearance, which 

 holds that, when they at length reach the coast, the 

 entire company end their journey by committing whole- 

 sale suicide in the waters of the ocean ; after which, 

 they are of course seen no more. It is sufficient 

 however for our purpose to note the fact that they 

 do, in some way, suddenly disappear. Another remark- 

 able instance of a small, weak creature, surviving amid 

 the eternal snows, is that of the arctic mouse (Mus 

 Musculus}. These ferocious little creatures seem to 

 swarm in summer pretty well all over the barren 

 grounds of Arctic America; at that season the mice 

 are brown, but like other polar animals, turn white in 

 winter. As regards the ferocious nature of this mouse 

 it is stated that " if disturbed in a tuft of grass, it 

 will turn on a man, and dance, with impotent rage, 

 at his feet." 



Mr. Pike says he has met with one of these mice 

 crossing immense snow-covered lakes in winter time, 

 miles from the shore, and no place seeming to be too 



* Encvcl. Brit., Qth Edition, Vol. xiv, p. 436. 

 t Ibid. 



The Barren Grounds of Northern Canada, by Warburton Pike, 

 1892, p. 183. 



