Peeps at Many Lands (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...but in winter he comes out in pure white, with a jet-black tip to his tail, a skin worth a lot of money. Of all these small Norwegian animals perhaps the most interesting is the lemming, who, for some reason best known to himself, does not trouble to put on a white coat in the winter, but keeps to his stripy jacket all the year round. He lives everywhere--up on the mountains and down in the valleys, and is hardly as large as an ordinary rat; but woe betide the dog that brings him to bay, for if he finds his road to escape barred, he will sit up and fight to the death, and he 50 knows how to bite. Yet he would much rather run away if he could, as in ordinary life he is quite peacefully inclined, and feeds on nothing more than grass and herbs and roots. But there is a peculiarity about the lemming which makes the country-folk of Norway more afraid of him than of any other animal. In most years you may wander about the country for weeks and never see a lemming, but occasionally there comes what is called a "lemming-year," when more young lemmings are born than usual, and then the trouble begins. They eat up everything round about their homes, and they begin to wander in search of food in packs of thousands, like swarms of locusts. The farmers try to destroy them, but they soon give up the attempt, as for days and days the lemmings come on in great waves, eating up the grass and the crops wherever they pass. Except the sea, nothing will stop them when once they have made a start; they come down the mountain-sides, swim the rivers and streams, rush through the forests, and, eating as they go, devastate the farm-lands. They do not wander hither and thither, but keep to the same direction straight ahead, until they eventually reach the sea. Whether they think that it is only another river to be crossed, or whether they think that they have done enough damage for one lifetime, nobody knows; but into the sea they all plunge madly, and, of...