Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/362

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Schœffer, whom we next cite, believed that

Although prepared to believe that they hanged themselves, he did not believe that they were bred in the clouds. He says:

Pontoppidan, writing at a later period, says:

Pontoppidan, who had never seen the lemming alive, although he collected a large amount of interesting information, credible and incredible, regarding it, notes a holiday held in his time throughout Bergen, termed a mouse-festival, which had so far degenerated from its ancient purpose, that the peasants put on their holiday clothes and went to sleep. In former times the day was kept as a solemn fast, "to avert the plague of lemen and other mice, which some pretend have been used to fall down formerly from the clouds."

"Wormius, in his treatise on the lemming, gives an exorcism used on such occasions, of which the following is a translation: