Word: lemminger
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The popular belief is that the lemmings' persistent dash to death is an instinctive longing for their former home in the sunken continent of Atlantis. But, notes Elton, the lemmings also surge eastward into the Baltic, northward into the Arctic. Not the whither but the whence, says Elton, explains...
Awareness of rodent cycles also helps prevent diseases among human beings. In Norway, for example, lemming invasions are accompanied by outbreaks of "lemming fever"-a form of tularemia. Vole outbreaks in India stimulate the dread bubonic plague; in Central Europe, food poisoning ("ptomaine poisoning"); in Africa, a fever of men...
When the rodents increase, foxes increase. So do hawks, snowy owls, martens and even caribou (because the wolves eat the rodents, which are easier to catch than caribou). When the rodents disappear, the foxes die off, and the snowy owls-"a mass of transfigured lemming" -emigrate to the U.S. Wolves...
They give their chambermaids severe instructions. Nevertheless, other Manhattan hotels were envious when, last week, mice were reported in the Waldorf-Astoria. For one thing, these mice were dead. For another, they were, as mice go, famed. They had arrived in the luggage of Explorer-Engineer Grant Carveth Wells of...
First--Melander, Sweden, with 24 points; second, Mudin, Hungary, 25 points; third, Lemming, Sweden, 29 points.