more ago, and such wild excitements no longer enter into
the Norsemen's lives.

Yet less ferocious animals give the people trouble enough, and
amongst these may be mentioned the lynx and the wolverine, or glutton,
each of which will make his supper off a sheep or a goat if he gets
the chance. Of the two the lynx is perhaps the worse poacher, and
his proverbial sharpness renders him difficult to catch. Not so the
glutton, who, if he succeeds in crawling through a hole in the fence
of a sheepfold, stuffs himself so full that he cannot get out again. I
think that most of us would rather be called lynx-eyed than gluttonous,
and certainly a lynx is a much handsomer beast than a glutton.

With the exception of the rabbit, all our English animals are found
in Norway--the badger, fox, hare, otter, squirrel, hedgehog, polecat,
stoat, and the rest of them. But besides these there are little Arctic
foxes and Arctic hares, with bluish-grey coats in the summer and
snowy-white ones in the winter. This change of colour is a provision
of Nature, rendering these particular animals, and some birds also,
almost invisible among the snows. The ermine is another instance of
this. In summer he is just an ugly little brown stoat; 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
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 swar