LEMMUS 393 



Lemmus is now confined to circumpolar regions, mostly 

 in arctic latitudes, including Novaya Zemlya (Z. obensis), but 

 not Spitzbergen, Franz Joseph Land, Iceland, or Greenland. 

 In North America it ranges from Alaska to Hudson's Bay, 

 north to about "jo" N. lat. in Boothia Felix (Ross), and south 

 to about 55° N. in the Peace River region (Preble) ; with an 

 insular species, L. nigripes (True), in St George's Island, 

 Bering Sea. L. obensis (Brants), of Arctic Siberia, has an 

 isolated colony in the Syansk Mountains, west of Lake 

 Baikal, at 2200 feet (Thomas). 



L. lemmus (Linnsus),^ the well-known Norwegian Lemming, 

 extinct in Britain, is now confined to Skandinavia, south to 

 Christiansand (Collett) and northern Wermland (Lilljeborg), 

 with Finland and Russian Lapland to the Kola Peninsula. 



It was widely distributed in the Pleistocene or post-Pleistocene 

 of Western and Central Europe, its bones having been found in 

 North Germany, Saxony, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, and 

 Switzerland (Hensel, Zeits. d. Deutsch. Geol. Gesellsch., Berlin, 

 vii., 486, pi. XXV., figs. 10, II, and 15, 1855 ; Nehring, Zeits. f. 

 Ges. Naturw., Berlin, xlv., 1-28, 1875). Gadow's discovery of 

 " mummies " of a Lemmus (Barrett-Hamilton, Proc. Zool. Soc, 

 London, 3rd March 1896, 304), in caves near Athouguia, 

 Santarem, Portugal, has been a stumbling-block to many, who 

 refuse to accept the locality as correct {e.g., Harle, Bull. Soc. 

 Gdol. de France, 1909, 98 ; Comm. da Commis. do Serv. Geol. 

 de Portugal, viii., 52, 81, 1910-1911). But Nehring {Sitzungsb. 

 der Gesellsch. naturf. Freunde, 1899, 3, 55 ; also Wiegemann's 

 Archiv fur Naturg., Ixv. (i.), Bd. 2, 175-182) assigned them 

 to a distinct variety named crassidens, on account of its 

 large teeth, and Miller agrees that the Portuguese remains 

 cannot at present be synonymised with L. lemmus. This fact 

 supports the unexpected locality, but a collector sent by Haile 

 to examine all the caves in the neighbourhood failed to find 

 further specimens. 



In Great Britain it was first reported bySanford {op. cit. supra, 

 PP- 382-3) from Somerset caves, and it is now known to have 

 been an abundant member of the late Pleistocene, and perhaps 



Mus lemmus, Linnseus, Systema Natura, x., 59, described from the mountains 

 of Lappmark, Sweden. 



VOL. 11. 2 C 



