the north side, a little within Cape Seaforth; most of them 

 were caught in their holes. The day before I had seen in 

 Ørsteds Dal no less than 6 lemmings , slipping from one hole 

 to another in the bright sunshine ; in some places several 

 holes were connected with one another, so that the lemming 

 ran into one hole, and came out of another. As the lemming 

 goes about very little in daytime , there is scarcely any doubt 

 that it was exceedingly common here, and numerous holes, with 

 sand recently thrown up, showed this. The holes lead to a 

 passage that may be sometimes as long as 2 metres, but often 

 it is shorter; as a rule it has no outlet. At the bottom the 

 passage widens, and there the nest has its place. Deichmann 

 often found the nest under a stone ; he also saw nests built in 

 dried brooklets under loose stones , thus in Manby Halvø. 

 The nest has a globular form, and is made of dry grass, and 

 lined with the winter wool of the musk-ox; a little outside is 

 found a heap of dung; the lemming seems to put off its ex- 

 crements here, but never in the very nest; by and by a whole 

 cake of dung is formed, which the lemming tramples down by 

 running to and fro over it. Single lemmings, or pairs of them, 

 were found in these holes , but there is reason to believe that 

 several lemmings often live in the same nest, and especially 

 the young must live there, at least for some time, before leaving 

 the nest. Curiously enough, we did not see any newborn lem- 

 ming or even a quite young animal ; they don't seem to have 

 young in August. Also at Forsblad Inlet, both near the mouth 

 and farther in, 9 lemmings in all were caught, from August 27 

 till August 28. In Mackenzie Bay and in Musk-ox Inlet Kolt- 

 hoff, in the same year, met with them in numbers, and brought 

 home more than a hundred living ones ; several of them bred 

 in captivity. 



There is no doubt that the lemming is very frequently met 

 with in these regions, and I do not believe Nathorst is right, 

 when supposing from the fact that many lemmings were caught 



