Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/425

Rh vulgarly reported, for they are often eaten by the Laplanders, who compare their flesh to that of squirrels." M. Guyon disposes of the theory that these migrations are influenced by approaching severe weather, since the one witnessed by himself took place in the spring; also the superabundance of food during the previous autumn precluded all idea of starvation. He therefore adopts a third view, that excessive multiplication in certain years necessitates emigration, and that this follows a descending course, like the mountain streams, till at length the ocean is reached. Mr. R. Collett, a Norwegian naturalist, writes that in November, 1868, a ship sailed for fifteen hours through a swarm of lemmings, which extended as far over the Trondhjems-fjord as the eye could reach.

I will now relate my own experience of the lemming during three migrations in Norway, and in a state of captivity in England. The situation of Heimdalen, where I reside during the summer months, is peculiarly well suited for observation of their migrations, lying as it does at an elevation of three thousand feet, and immediately under the highest mountains in Scandinavia, and yet, except during migration, I have never seen or been able to procure a specimen. It was in the autumn of 1867 that I first heard the peculiar cry of the lemming, guided by which I soon found the pretty animal backed up by a stone, against which it incessantly jerked its body in passionate leaps of rage, all the while uttering a shrill note of defiance. The black, beadlike eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and the teeth shone white in the sunlight. I hastily snatched at the savage little creature, but it sprang completely round, fastened its teeth sharply in my hand, and taking advantage of my surprise escaped under a large stone, whence I could not dislodge it. A Norwegian friend who accompanied me by no means shared my feelings of satisfaction at the sight of a lemming. "We shall have a severe winter and no grass next spring owing to those children of Satan!" was his comment on the event. However, it was many a month before I saw another, then, on lifting a flat stone I found six in a nest of dried grass, blind, and apparently but just born. In a few days the whole fjeld became swarming with these pretty voles; at the same time white and blue foxes made their appearance, and snowy owls and many species of hawks became abundant. My dogs, too, were annoyed by the rash courage of the new-comers, which would jump at their noses even when slowly drawing on game, so that they never spared a lemming, though they never ate them till last year, when I observed that they would eat their heads only, rejecting the body, although they devoured the common field mouse to the end of his tail. As the season advanced and snow covered the ground, the footprints and headless carcasses told plainly how hard it must be for a lemming to preserve its life, although there can be no doubt that its inherent pugnacity is its worst enemy. In this country we fail to conceive how much active life goes on beneath the snow, which in more northern latitudes forms a warm roof to numerous birds, quadrupeds, and insects, which are thus enabled to secure an otherwise impossible sustenance. At the same time, as I have already noticed, a fearful struggle for existence is carried on during the long autumnal nights before the snow has become a protection rather than a new source of danger to all save predaceous animals. It was a curious sight, when the whole visible landscape was of an unbroken whiteness, to see a dark form suddenly spring from the surface and scurry over the snow, and again vanish. I found that some of the holes by means of which this feat was executed were at least five feet in depth, yet even here was no safety, for the reindeer often kill the lemmings by stamping on them, though I do not believe their bodies are ever eaten.

During the autumn I noticed no migration, or rather there was only an immigration from some point to the eastward, and in the subsequent migrations of 1870-1 and 1875-6 I still found the same state of things. The animals arrived during early autumn, and immediately began to breed; there was no procession, no serried bands undeterred by obstacles, but there was an invasion of temporary settlers, which were speedily shut out from human view by the snow, and it was not till the following summer that the army, reinforced by five or six generations, went out to perish like the hosts of Pharaoh. On calm mornings my lake, which is a mile in width, was often thickly studded with swimming lemmings, every head pointing westward, but I observed that when my boat came near enough to frighten them they would lose all idea of direction and frequently swim back to the bank they had left. When the least wind ruffled the water every swimmer was drowned, and never did frailer barks tempt a more treacherous sea, as the wind 