4 NOVEMBER 1876, Page 3

43– tile meeting of the Linnstan Society, Mr. Crotch broached

again his belief that the lemmings--Nor- wegian rodents, which migrate westwards from time to time— really take to the sea, in search of some island to which their pro- genitors used to migrate,—some Atlantis which has now disappeared, —and are drowned. If this view of the migrations of the lem- mings can be established, it would certainly shake the popular views of instinct, and be the greatest warning against a blind conservatism of practice in the world. Yet the tendency among those who have been long accustomed to go somewhither, to go on steadily with the practice, after the terminus ad quern has really disappeared, is not confined to the lemmings.