WILD-LIFE IN FOREST AND FJELD. 
281 
think so, since, once there, the beast came straight on 
to the charge. Even when sitting in the months of 
their holes, lemmings will as often as not come out 
to attack. 
The lemming is a careless, happy-go-lucky creature. 
When he goes for a walk he seems to take no bearings 
or to remember his way home. Hence, if disturbed, 
he will either “ charge home ” with furious battle- 
cry, or struggle away, squealing, through rough ling 
and scrub; whereas a mouse, if alarmed in the open, 
streaks off to his hole along a made and known highway. 
The abundance of lemmings this autumn (1895) had 
induced an unusual quantity of birds of prey. These 
were chiefly Eough-legged Buzzards on the higher 
ground, Goshawks in the lower forest: there were also 
Peregrines, and occasionally the white-looking Jer- 
Falcon, which our hunters assured us they had known to 
nest here on a pine. In a little “ green-room ” of spruce- 
forest I came right upon a Goshawk feeding. So close 
grew the trees, that he had to come out by the same 
way I had come in, and I felt the wind of his wings 
as he swept barely two yards overhead. His dinner 
had consisted of a hazel-grouse, and but little remained 
beyond bones and feathers, balanced on a moss-clad 
stump. 
Another day (Sept. 28th), while sitting, about 
“pumped out,” on the end of a terribly long and rough 
pine-ridge we had just drawn blank, a big hawk swept 
down-wind, wheeled and poised for an instant at eighty 
yards. I “covered’’ the bird, merely in idleness; but, 
thinking the aim was rather a fine one, touched the 
trigger and it fell. The *45 0 bullet had struck the 
