Abstract
HAVING resided during the summer months for more than twenty years on the plateau from which the migrations of the Norwegian lemming are supposed by many to take their origin, I can speak from personal observation. Some years ago I had the honour to read a rather lengthy paper before the Linnean Society on these animals, and, with one exception, to which reference will be presently made, I am happy in having nothing to alter or recant. The increase of the Lemmings is not cumulative, but rather periodic, as indeed is usual among the voles as well as among many other forms of life. The migrations are not caused by insufficient food now, whatever they may formerly have been, and this is evident from the fact that the swarms pass through, but do not exhaust the fertile districts which they encounter on their pilgrimage. Nor are they affected by any personal struggles between these most pugnacious of animals, for the young litters, when reared, go singly on the journey from which none have ever been observed to return. They do not follow the watershed, and they do not always migrate to the west—an error into which I was betrayed by trusting to common report and insufficient personal experience. But they do go straight. It is well known that the eyes of the lemming are so placed on the top of the head as to render it impossible for the animal when swimming, to discern any object not far above the plane of its horizon. On a calm morning last summer, I often placed my boat in the path of the swimmers, and noticed that they crossed my lake in an absolute “bee-line,” and that they could not discern my presence until the angle subtended by the boat was infinitely higher than that of the opposite shore. This latter migration was south-east, and in the late autumn the steamer on Lake Mjosen made its way through thousands of these hapless wayfarers; whilst, still later, large numbers were to be seen close to Christiania; but I venture to prophesy that none will be found in that neighbourhood next year, nor, for the matter of that, in Heimdalen itself, though it is obvious that some must remain. Probably the explanation of these apparently capricious and suicidal migrations may be that they are the result of hereditary instinct, which formerly was of service if not necessary to the species. The straight course which they pursue must be owing to the sense of direction common to migrants, and I would hazard the conjecture that the changes of destination may be due to an instinct which, owing to its present inutility, is gradually diminishing in precision and intensity.
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DUPPA-CROTCH, W. The Migration of the Lemming. Nature 45, 199 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/045199a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/045199a0
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