Lemming

a gnawing animal of the North. There are several species. The most celebrated is the Lapland lemming, confined to Lapland and Norway. It is about seven inches long, with half an inch of tail. It burrows in the earth, and makes its nest of moss. From four to eight young are produced twice a year. Its color is yellow with black markings. The lemming is really a large field mouse, although it is sometimes called the Norway rabbit. Its home is in the mountains of Scandinavia. Once in every four or ten years, whether driven by scarcity of food or fear of a severe winter no one has been able to determine, the lemmings leave their mountain home, gathering at the foot of eastern and western slopes. They take their way in long skirmisb lines eastward to the Gulf of Bothnia, or westward toward the Atlantic. They travel by night and halt by day. Wherever they stop they devour everything eatable. They leave gardens and meadows and fields as bare as if overrun by fire. Although multitudes are killed by the inhabitants nothing will turn them back. They fight fiercely and cannot be diverted from their course. If they reach a rock they go around it; if a log, they climb over it. On reaching a river or narrow sea they swim directly across. If they encounter a floating log they climb over it rather than change their direction. After a time they begin to straggle homeward, but of the millions who left the mountains, men, birds of prey, water, fire, and starvation overpower all but a handful. There are several other lemmings, one in Central Asia and one in northern Russia. The Hudson Bay lemming is to be found near the bay of that name. Still further north is the Greenland lemming. A small species, five and one-half inches long, is found in the rocky regions of the Sahara. See Mouse