LEMING. 
the cattle. The flesh of the Lemings is not 
good ; and their skin, though the hair be fine, 
does not answer for making furs, because it is 
too thick. It woujd appear," BufFon ob- 
serves, " that the Lemings, like the Rats, mu- 
tually destroy and eat one another, when pas- 
ture fails them; and that this is the reason 
why their destruction is as sudden as their 
multiplication." 
This is the account, at large, as given by 
Buffon, whose philosophic mind has adopted 
but little of the marvellous in which the his- 
tory of these animals is enveloped : the predo- 
minant poetical imagination of Goldsmith, in 
spite of his philosophy, has not permitted him 
to be always equally proof against the fasci- 
nating charms of these fanciful relations. 
Our countryman Pennant, with far less of fancy 
than even Buffon, presents a more correct and 
not unanimated description of the Leming, 
accompanied by some information which has 
escaped the great French naturalist. His ac- 
count is as follows-— 
" It inhabits Norway, and Lapland; the 
country 
