of the Hudson’s bat territory. 
143 
snow — prevents it freezing up. These huts enable the rats to 
extend their feeding ground to all parts of the pond, which could 
not be reached at all, or with difficulty, from the house if they 
had to swim home every time with a mouthful of food, to eat it. 
With these little shelters they are saved a great amount of labour 
and are enabled to reach all the food in the pond.* I remember* 
when on a snow-shoe journey, one of my men went very quietly 
up to one of these miniature mud huts, and knocked it over with 
his axe, disclosing a live rat with some of the food it had been 
eating. The practice of building these little eating huts is by 
no means common, and does not seem to be resorted to when 
the pond is of moderate dimensions, and all parts of it can be 
reached from the house wdthout difficulty. 
I am not aware if it is generally known that the lemmings 
(Myodes hudsonicus , &c.) of North America migrate much in 
the same manner as do those of Norway and Sweden. When 
travelling in June 1851 southward from the Arctic coast along 
the west bank of the Coppermine River, and north of the Arctic 
Circle, we met with thousands of these lemmings speeding north- 
ward, and as the ice on some of the smaller streams had broken 
up, it was amusing to see these little creatures running back- 
wards and forwards along the banks looking for a smooth place 
with slow current at which to swim across. Having found this, 
they at once jumped in, swam very fast, and on reaching the 
opposite side gave themselves a good shake as a dog would, and 
continued their journey as if nothing had happened. At that 
date the sun was above the horizon all hours of the 24, and we 
were travelling by night to avoid the snow-glare in our eyes, the 
sun being then in our rear. As the lemmings appeared to travel 
only by night, we should not have seen them had we been 
travelling in the daytime, for they then hide themselves under the 
snow, or stones. The man who was carrying our cooking utensils 
and small supply of provisions, having, when fording a stream, 
been swept into a deep hole by the current, whereby his whole 
load was lost, we had, for a day or tw r o, to live chiefly on 
lemmings roasted between thin plates of limestone, and found 
them very fat and good. Our dogs easily killed as many as they 
required. Prior to this, whilst on the coast, crossing the ice to 
islands some miles distant, a lemming was noticed defending 
* The beaver, especially when its dam is large, scrapes holes in the banks 
from under water upwards until above the water-level, to which it retires to feed 
instead of going back to its house. — J. R. 
