76 HE FALLS FROM THE CLOUDS. 



feet, called lemmar, or lemming, of the size of a rat, and 

 with a skin of diverse colours, fall from the air* during 

 tempests and sudden showers; but no man knows from 

 whence they come : whether from the more remote islands, 

 and brought by the wind, or that they are bred of feculent 

 matter in the clouds; yet this is proved, that so soon as 

 they fall down, green grass, not yet digested, is found in 

 their bellies. These, like unto locusts, appearing in great 

 swarms, destroy everything green ; and owing to their 

 venomous nature, all living things bitten by them perish. 

 These swarms live so long as they do not feed on young 

 grass. Like unto swallows that are ready to fly away, 

 they gather together in great troops. But at the set time 

 they die of malignant exhalations from the earth (and from 

 the decomposition of their bodies the air grows pestilential 

 and affects the people with vertigo and jaundice), or they are 

 devoured by beasts commonly called hermelin, or weasels, 

 and these grow fat thereby, and their skins grow larger." 



" The lemmings," so we are farther informed by Pontop- 

 pidan, " multiply very fast, by what we see of them, though, 

 God be praised ! this is but seldom : about once or twice in 

 twenty years, when they come from their peculiar abodes. 



* This singular notion still prevails, and, moreover, is not confined alto- 

 gether to the lower classes. Many, indeed, solemnly aver they themselves 

 have seen the lemming falling from the heavens into the sea! That these 

 animals may at times have been observed descending, parachute fashion, from 

 above, does not seem to be altogether denied. But assuming such to be the 

 fact, the learned account for the phenomenon, either by supposing that they 

 may have escaped from the talons of birds of prey soaring aloft, or that when 

 traversing the frozen surface of the flail, where there is little or no hold for 

 their claws, their woolly jackets have come within the vortex of a strong 

 whirlwind, which has lifted them up from terra firma, and carried them bodily 

 away into the neighbouring ocean. 



