Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/423

Rh 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 field 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 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-'71, and 1875-'76, 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, reënforced by five or six generations, went out to perish like the hosts of Pharaoh. On calm mornings my lake, which is a mile