STRANGE ANIMALS AND THEIR WAYS, 359 



2. Its cheeks are blanched, and it sports a pair of long, 

 light whiskers, and its eyes, though small, are beautifully 

 black and piercing. The lip is divided, and the ears are 

 small and sharply pointed. As its home borders on the 

 region of eternal snow, in the valleys of the Kolen Mount- 

 ains, which separate Sweden from Nordland, its hair is 

 both thick and soft, and becomes almost white during the 

 long and cheerless winter of these inhospitable regions. 

 The skin is much thinner than in any of its congeners. 



The Lemming, or Norway Bat. 



When enraged, it gives utterance to a sharp yelp, similar 

 to that of a month-old terrier-whelp. 



3. It is a lively little fellow, when met with in its na- 

 tive haunts during the short summer — now sitting on its 

 haunches nibbling at a piece of lichen, or the catkins of 

 the birch, which it conveys to its mouth with its fore paws, 

 after the manner of the squirrel, or engaging in a romp 

 with its fellows, popping in and out of its burrow in the 

 earth, where it sleeps and rears its young, of which the fe- 

 male has two or three litters annually, numbering from five 



