456 On the Icelandic Mammalian Fauna. 



to me (for which I am much indebted to him, and in which he 

 kindly replies to some epistolary remarks upon his hypothesis 

 made with great brevity and only en passant) he has strongly 

 affirmed the possibility of this, and at the same time urged me 

 to obtain information from Iceland to clear up the matter, 

 I may be permitted to add the following further explana- 

 tions. 



It is far from being the case, as some might perhaps think, 

 that the statements given by the Icelanders to Olafsen and 

 Henderson relate to a mouse living in the interior or very far 

 from buildings. Madame Benedictson, when she was a young 

 girl, would certainly not have amused herself for half a day 

 in such deserts ; and the wood of Husefell was and is a much fre- 

 quented place* through which a highway passes from Borgar- 

 fjorden ; the situation therefore was such that the Icelanders 

 had good opportunities of noticing the animals' proceedings ; 

 and Olafsen himself states expressly that travellers often meet 

 with the store of provisions laid up by the mice. Moreover, 

 how could it be possible for a mouse which lived far from 

 dwellings, or far in the interior of the country, to obtain cow- 

 dung for its rafts? 



On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that even if the 

 animal that was the subject of these reports had been a lem- 

 ming, it need not have lived in the interior : the very species 

 of lemming that Murray thinks it might have been is not an 

 inland animal, but occurs near the coasts. 



Finally, it must be remembered that the interior of the 

 country far from habitations is by no means unfrequented or 

 unknown, and least of all the districts which still have an 

 abundant vegetation of bushes and berry-bearing plants. Not 

 to mention the journeys of the Icelanders and foreigners 

 through a great part of the interior in passing from one prin- 

 cipal part of the country to another, the roads between which, 

 indeed, chiefly pass through uncultivated districts, I shall 

 only say that I myself moved about the country with a tent 

 for two summers, and often and for a long time remained far 

 from houses, and that my travelling-companion Hallgrimsson 

 has done just the same in other corners of the country. 

 Neither of us saw the least trace of any animal resembling a 

 lemming, or heard the Icelanders mention any such animal ; 

 and I must also add that our attention was already called to 

 the subject in consequence of the discovery by Scoresby of a 

 Hypudccus or Lemmus on the east coast of Greenland. 



* It is frequented by people from nearly tlie whole of Borgarfjorden, 

 who obtain from it birch wood for charcoal and for building-purposes. 

 (Smlgn. Eg. Olafsen, i. pp. 1G7, 168.) 



