“If he appeals to the authorities he is baffled by the practical impossibility of fixing responsibility for damage upon the right owner. Only the Lapps know the offender, and a verdict with damages often enough serves no other purpose than that of bringing Scandinavian justice into ridicule, for, before it can be carried into effect, the defendant has gone on another of his annual migrations.” This pest has at last reached such dimensions that special laws were made about a year ago to meet it. Norway and Sweden have therefore been divided into districts, and if damage be done, and the owners of the offending animals not be given up, the entire district has to make good the damage, each family having to pay in proportion to the number of reindeer which they own. Now we will take another example of migration from the same country. As we have seen, the migration of the reindeer occurs at regular intervals, and can be provided against, especially as it is possible to make the owners of the migrators responsible for the damage which they do. But there is one animal of northern Europe which has no special time for migration, against whose approach it is impossible to provide, whom it is almost equally impossible to resist when it is on the march, and for whom no one can be responsible. It is therefore far more baneful to civilized man. This is the lemming, a little, short-tailed, round-eared rodent, somewhat resembling our common water-rat in shape and size. In its ordinary life it is nothing more than a small, rather voracious, very prolific, and unintellectual rodent. It is too stupid to get out the way of anything, and if met by a cart its only idea would be to bite the wheel. Mr. Metcalfe mentions that two or three lemmings might be indulging in their favorite habit of sitting on a stump. If a traveler accompanied by dogs passed by them, the dogs were sure to fly at the lemmings. Yet the stupid creatures would not think of escaping, though there might be plenty of time to do so, but would merely sit on the stumps and try to bite the dogs’ noses. This remarkable stupidity will account for the way in which the migration invariably ends. Owing to its fecundity, conjoined with its voracity, it sometimes fails to obtain food in its own district, and migrates southward. The strangest point about this migration is its exceeding uncertainty. Fortunately, there is seldom an interval of less than seven years between the migrations, and seventeen years have been known to pass before the coming of the lemming. Yet, whatever the interval may be, the whole of the lemmings of vast northern districts begin their march southward through Norway and Sweden in search of food.