n 



the ground, where it is found in summer time, perhaps it is 

 even the most common thing. 



The food of the lemming consists of many different things; 

 it devours very greedily the bark, buds and leaves from the 

 willow (Salix arctica); it does not care so much for dwarf- 

 birch; heather and crowberries it does not eat; but it is fond 

 of grass, flowers of Rammculus, Dryas etc., stems and leaves 

 of Taraxacum^ leaves of Oxyria, but especially it is fond 

 of the small tuberous roots of Polygonum viviparum; it was 

 very amusing to see them scrape such tubers from the green 

 turfs which we put into the cage for them, pull them free, sit 

 down on their tails, place the tuber between their small fore 

 paws, and devour it in a great hurry. As above mentioned 

 the lemming in no way disdains a dead friend; the lemmings 

 which died in the cages were sometimes half devoured during 

 the night. 



All the lemmings we caught were in summer dress , but 

 the colour varied rather much; some of them were on the 

 upper part grey, with a dark streak down their backs, and were 

 quite without the red -brown colours; scarcely two were of 

 quite the same colour. During the way home, in September, 

 those we had in the cages began to get a lighter colour; white 

 hairs came forth round about in their furs; not till near Christ- 

 mas one of them was almost quite white; unfortunately most 

 of them died rather soon after our return, no one lived through 

 the winter. At the same time as the hair changes, the strong 

 clawish development of the tips of the two longest of the fore 

 toes took place, and when we got home, all those that had out- 

 lived the voyage had got these clawish protuberances. Reflec- 

 ting that winter begins in their harsh native country just at 

 that time, and the earth gets frozen, one understands what an 

 immense use the lemming may have from these protuberances; 

 probably they have simply been developed by the assiduous use 

 of the fore paws, when scraping the frozen earth. According 



