Ill.] 
THE LEMMING. 
147 
certain seasons occur in incredible numbers on Novaya Zemlya. 
For at the commencement of summer, when the snow has 
recently melted away, there are to be seen, everywhere in the 
level fertile places in the very close grass of the meadows, foot¬ 
paths about an inch and a half deep, which have been formed 
during winter by the trampling of these small animals, under the 
snow, in the bed of grass or lichens which lies immediately 
above the frozen ground. They have in this way united with each 
other the dwellings they had excavated in the ground, and con¬ 
structed for themselves convenient ways, well protected against 
the severe cold of winter, to their fodder-places. Thou¬ 
sands and thousands of animals must be required in order to 
carry out this work even over a small area, and wonderfully 
keen must their sense of locality be, if, as seems probable, they 
can find their way with certainty in the endless labyrinth they 
have thus formed. During the snow^-melting season these pass¬ 
ages form channels for running off the water, small indeed, but 
everywhere to be met with, and contributing in a considerable 
degree to the drying of the ground. The ground besides is at 
certain places so thickly strewed with lemming dung, that it 
must have a considerable influence on the condition of the soil. 
In the Arctic regions proper one is not tormented by the 
mosquito/ and viewed as a whole the insect fauna of the entire 
Polar area is exceedingly scanty, although richer than was 
before supposed. Arachnids, acarids, and podurids occur most 
1 That is to say, not on Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, for it is 
otherwise on the coast of the mainland. In West Greenland the mosquito 
as far north as the southern part of Disco Island is still so terrible, especi¬ 
ally to the new comer during the first days, that the face of any one who 
without a veil ventures into marshy ground overgrown with bushes, 
becomes in a few hours unrecognisable. The eyelids are closed with 
swelling and changed into water-filled bladders, suppurating tumours are 
formed in the head under the hair, &c. But when a man has once under¬ 
gone this unpleasant and painful inoculation, the body appears, at least 
for one summer, to be less susceptible to the mosquito-poison. 
