REIKEVIG. 
43 
punish the inhabitants for their disaffection to 
the mother country, sent over some foxes to the 
island, where they have rapidly increased, to 
the great injury of the flocks. The few rats and 
mice *, that are said to exist here, are brought 
by the ships from other countries. Thus it 
breed of magpies, which now infest that island to such a de 
gree, as to he highly injurious, was originally imported by 
the Eng’ish to plague them. It is more likely, if the Ice¬ 
landic foxes be not really natives of the country, that they 
found their way thither from the neighbouring coast of 
Greenland on the floating masses of ice. 
* Speaking of the native animals of Iceland, Pennant, in 
bis Arctic Zoology, Introduction, page lxx. suspects, “ that 
f< there is a species allied, as Doctor Pallas imagines, to the 
<( (Economic Mouse; for, like that, it lays in a great maga- 
‘‘ zine of berries, by way of winter stores. This species is 
“ particularly plentiful in the wood of Husafels. In a coun- 
“ try where berries are but thinly dispersed, these little ani- 
“ mals are obliged to cross rivers to make their distant 
s< forages. In their return with the booty to their maga- 
“ zines, they are obliged to repass the stream; of which 
f< Mr. Olafsen gives the following account: f The party, 
which consists of from six to ten, select a flat piece of 
dried cow-dung, on which they place the berries on a 
ft heap in the middle; then, by their united force, bring 
it to the water’s edge, and, after launching it, embark, 
se and place themselves' round the heap, with their heads 
‘‘joined over it, and their backs to the water, their 
“ tails pendent" in the stream, serving the purpose of 
f( rudders.’ When I consider the wonderful sagacity of 
