DR. BREHM ON THE LEMMING 
able or apparently insurmountable. This perseverance, 
however, leads to nothing ; for from these exodus no 
lemming ever returns. Like the Crusaders of old, they 
die from various causes on their travels. From falling 
into water, from fights with one another, and a vast 
quantity of them fall a prey to wolves and gluttons, 
buzzards and ravens, who haunt their route and take 
abundant toll of the migrants. Occasionally during a 
lemming year a fever arises along the route among the 
human inhabitants, which is called lemming fever. This 
is due to the numerous putrefying corpses left along the 
way, and is a testimony to their multitudes. The 
rapidity with which lemmings multiply is well put by 
Dr. Brehm, who says, “ All the young of the first litter 
of the various lemming females thrive, and six weeks 
later at the most these also multiply. Meanwhile the 
parents have brought forth a second and a third litter, 
and these in their turn bring forth young.” In past 
times lemmings lived in this country, and the interesting 
observation has been lately made of quite fresh-looking 
skeletons, with skins attached, in Portugal. It seems 
possible that lemmings still lurk among the fastnesses of 
the Iberian peninsula. 
THE CAPYBARA 
Apart from the mysterious, and until this year almost 
fabulous Dinomys, of which the first and only example 
known until lately was met with casually wandering 
round the courtyard of a house in a remote Peruvian 
town, without visible means of subsistence or ascertain- 
able residence, the capybara, or carpincho, is the largest 
existing rodent. There was once upon a time—literally 
‘‘ when pigs were swine,”’ for the Suic were of a general- 
ized type, and could be better called swine than pig, 
which denotes the Chinese domestic variety—a rodent 
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