146 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
which would jump at their noses even when slowly drawing on 
game, so that they never spared a lemming, though they never 
ate them till last year, when I observed that they would eat 
their heads only, rejecting the body, although they devoured 
the common field mouse to the end of his tail. As the season 
advanced and snow covered the ground, the footprints and 
headless carcasses told plainly how hard it must he for a 
lemming to preserve its life, although there can be no doubt 
that its inherent pugnacity is its worst enemy. In this country 
we fail to conceive how much active life goes on beneath the 
snow, which in more northern latitudes forms a warm roof to 
numerous birds, quadrupeds, and insects, which are thus enabled 
to secure an otherwise impossible sustenance. At the same 
time, as I have already noticed, a fearful struggle for existence 
is carried on during the long autumnal nights before the snow 
has become a protection rather than a new source of danger to 
all save predaceous animals. It was a curious sight, when the 
whole visible landscape was of an unbroken whiteness, to see a 
dark form suddenly spring from the surface and scurry over the 
snow, and again vanish. I found that some of the holes by 
means of which this feat was executed were at least five feet 
in depth, yet even here was no safety, for the reindeer often 
kill the lemmings by stamping on them, though I do not 
believe their bodies are ever eaten. 
During the autumn I noticed no migration, or rather there 
was only an immigration from some point to the eastward, and 
in the subsequent migrations of 1870-1 and 1875-6 I still found 
the same state of things. The animals arrived during early 
autumn, and immediately began to breed ; there was no proces- 
sion, no serried bands undeterred by obstacles, but there was an 
invasion of temporary settlers, which were speedily shut out 
from human view by the snow, and it was not till the following 
summer that the army, reinforced by five or six generations, 
went out to perish like the hosts of Pharaoh. On calm morn- 
ings my lake, which is a mile in width, was often thickly 
studded with swimming lemmings, every head pointing west- 
ward, but I observed that when my boat came near enough to 
frighten them they would lose all idea of direction and fre- 
quently swim back to the bank they had left. When the least 
wind ruffled the water every swimmer was drowned, and never 
did frailer barks tempt a more treacherous sea, as the wind 
swept daily down the valley, and wrecked all who were then 
afloat. It was impossible not to feel pity for these self-haunted 
fugitives. A mere cloud passing over the sun affrighted them ; 
the approach of horse, cow, dog, or man alike roused their 
impotent anger, and their little bodies were convulsively pressed 
against the never-failing stone of vantage (see fig. 1), whilst 
