THE LIVING WORLD. 
510 
its body beautifully mottled in buff, chestnut or gray, while about its neck it seems 
to wear a white collar, from which fact it is sometimes called the collared lemur. 
Its plump little body is wrapped in plentiful and thick fur mantle, and like Kriss- 
Kingle, it wears furred boots and gloves. It has but a poor apology for a tail—a 
mere suspicion of hairs—but it wears sharp claws and manages to hear with¬ 
out external ears. 
The Myodes Lemmings do not change color with the seasons, they often 
lack claws, and have a different dental structure. The orange-colored species 
(.Myodes obenses ) is short-clawed and a strikingly brilliant creature. 
The European Lemming (Myodes lemmi ) is specially notable for the migra¬ 
tions in which all lemmings indulge. They reproduce the process of the historical 
colonizations of Greece or 
the invasion of Rome by 
the Goths and Vandals. 
Whenever the lemmmgs are 
troubled by a Malthusian 
excess of population, then 
some must move, bag and 
baggage, and once started 
on their way they persist 
in “ fighting it out on their 
chase-line, even though it 
take all summer.” Rivers, 
lakes, towns, forests, moun¬ 
tains, valleys, plains or preci¬ 
pices seem to them not only 
not insurmountable but 
alike matters of indifference. 
From Browning’s “Pied 
Piper of Hamelin” one may 
derive the most adequate idea of the irresistible progress of their great hordes 
—not, be it understood, that Browning speaks of the lemming. 
The Short-tailed Field Mouse, Field Vole, or Campagnol (Arvicola 
arvalis),\§ red above and gray beneath. It is a good climber; in the winter it 
builds subterranean nests, but in the summer it prefers the surface of the 
ground. This is the little creature to which the poet Burns devoted one of his 
most characteristic and popular poems : 
“ Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, 
Oh, what a panic in thy breastie ! 
Thou need na start awa sa hasty, 
Wi’ bickering brattle ! 
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee, 
Wi’ murd’ring pattle ! ” 
An extraordinary instance of the rapid increase of mice, and of the injury 
they sometimes do, occurred a few years ago in the plantations made by order 
of the Crown in Dean Forest, Gloucestershire, and in the New Forest, Hamp¬ 
shire. Soon after the planting of these forests, a sudden and rapid increase of 
mice took place in them, threatening destruction to all the young plants. Vast 
numbers of young trees were killed, the mice having eaten through the roots 
hamster and lemmings (Cricetus vulgaris, Myodes lemnius). 
