Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/425

Rh calm day, and perishes with its front still pointing westward. No faint heart lingers on the way; and no survivor returns to the mountains.

There appears to have been a difficulty in keeping these restless creatures in captivity, both because they escape through incredibly small apertures (generally, however, dying from internal injuries thus caused), and because they will gnaw through a stout wooden cage in one night, and devote every spare moment to this one purpose, with a pertinacity worthy of Baron Trenck. At all events, few have been brought alive to this country, and none have survived. At present (February, 1877) I have one which I have preserved since September last, defeating his attempts at escape by lining the cage with tin, and allowing him a plentiful supply of fresh water, in which he is always dabbling. With the approach of winter all his attempts to escape ceased, and I now always take the little stranger for an airing in my closed hands while his bed is being made and his room cleaned out. He seems to like this, but after a few minutes a gentle nibble at my finger testifies to his impatience; and if this be not attended to, the



biting progresses in a crescendo scale until it becomes unbearable, although it has never under these circumstances drawn blood. My little prisoner shows few other signs of tameness, but the fits of jumping, biting, and snarling rage have almost ceased. I expect, however, that, with the return of spring, the migratory impulse will be renewed, and that he will kill himself against the wires of his cage like a swallow.

The reader is now in a position to consider the three questions raised by the above facts, and those questions are as follow: 1. Whence do the lemmings come? 2. Whither do they go? 3. Why do they migrate at all? With regard to the first, no one has yet supplied an answer. They certainly do not exist in my neighborhood