LEMGO, a town of Germany, in the principality of Lippe, in a broad and fertile plain, 9 m. N. from Detmold and on the railway Hameln-Lage. Pop. (1900) 8840. Its somewhat gloomy aspect, enhanced by the tortuous narrow lanes flanked by gabled houses of the 15th century, has gained for it among countryfolk the sobriquet of the “Witches’ nest” (Hexen-Nest). It is replete with interest for the antiquarian. It has four Evangelical churches, two with curiously leaning, lead-covered spires; an old town-hall; a gymnasium; and several philanthropic and religious institutions. Among the latter is the Jungfrauenstift, of which a princess of the reigning house of Lippe-Detmold has always been lady superior since 1306. The chief industry of Lemgo is the manufacture of meerschaum pipes, which has attained here a high pitch of excellence; other industries are weaving, brewing and the manufacture of leather and cigars. The town was a member of the Hanseatic league.
LEMIERRE, ANTOINE MARIN (1733–1793), French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris on the 12th of January 1733. His parents were poor, but Lemierre found a patron in the collector-general of taxes, Dupin, whose secretary he became. Lemierre gained his first success on the stage with Hypermnestre
(1758); Térée (1761) and Idoménée (1764) failed on account of the subjects. Artaxerce, modelled on Metastasio, and Guillaume Tell were produced in 1766; other successful tragedies were
La Veuve de Malabar (1770) and Barnavelt (1784). Lemierre revived Guillaume Tell in 1786 with enormous success. After the Revolution he professed great remorse for the production of a play inculcating revolutionary principles, and there is no doubt that the horror of the excesses he witnessed hastened his
death, which took place on the 4th of July 1793. He had been admitted to the Academy in 1781. Lemierre published La Peinture (1769), based on a Latin poem by the abbé de Marsy, and a poem in six cantos, Les Fastes, ou les usages de l’année (1779), an unsatisfactory imitation of Ovid’s Fasti.
His Œuvres (1810) contain a notice of Lemierre by R. Perrin and his Œuvres choisies (1811) one by F. Fayolle.
LEMIRE, JULES AUGUSTE (1853– ), French priest and social reformer, was born at Vieux-Berquin (Nord) on the 23rd of April 1853. He was educated at the college of St Francis of Assisi, Hazebrouck, where he subsequently taught philosophy and rhetoric. In 1897 he was elected deputy for Hazebrouck and was returned unopposed at the elections of 1898, 1902 and 1906. He organized a society called La Ligue du coin de terre et du foyer, the object of which was to secure, at the expense of the state, a piece of land for every French family desirous of possessing one. The abbé Lemire sat in the chamber of deputies as a conservative republican and Christian Socialist. He protested in 1893 against the action of the Dupuy cabinet in closing the Bourse du Travail, characterizing it as the expression of “a policy of disdain of the workers.” In December 1893 he was seriously injured by the bomb thrown by the anarchist Vaillant from the gallery of the chamber.
LEMMING, the native name of a small Scandinavian rodent mammal Lemmus norvegicus (or L. lemmus), belonging to the mouse tribe, or Muridae, and nearly related, especially in the structure of its cheek-teeth, to the voles. Specimens vary considerably in size and colour, but the usual length is about 5 in., and the soft fur yellowish-brown, marked with spots of dark brown and black. It has a short, rounded head, obtuse muzzle, small bead-like eyes, and short rounded ears, nearly concealed by the fur. The tail is very short. The feet are small, each with five claws, those of the fore feet strongest, and fitted for scratching and digging. The usual habitat of lemmings is the high lands or fells of the great central mountain chain of Norway
and Sweden, from the southern branches of the Langfjeldene in Christiansand stift to the North Cape and the Varangerfjord. South of the Arctic circle they are, under ordinary circumstances, confined to the plateaus covered with dwarf birch and juniper
above the conifer-region, though in Tromsö amt and in Finmarken they occur in all suitable localities down to the level of the sea. The nest, under a tussock of grass or a stone, is constructed of short dry straws, and usually lined with hair. The number of
young in each nest is generally five, sometimes only three occasionally seven or eight, and at least two broods are produced annually. Their food is entirely vegetable, especially grass roots and stalks, shoots of dwarf birch, reindeer lichens and mosses, in search of which they form, in winter, long galleries through the turf or under the snow. They are restless, courageous and pugnacious little animals. When suddenly disturbed, instead of trying to escape they sit upright, with their back against a stone, hissing and showing fight in a determined manner.
The Norwegian Lemming (Lemmus Norvegicus).
The circumstance which has given popular interest to the lemming is that certain districts of the cultivated lands of Norway and Sweden, where in ordinary circumstances they are unknown, are, at uncertain intervals varying from five to twenty or more years, overrun by an army of these little creatures, which steadily and slowly advance, always in the same direction, and regardless of all obstacles, swimming streams and even lakes of several miles in breadth, and committing considerable devastation on their line of march by the quantity of food they consume. In their turn they are pursued and harassed by crowds of beasts and birds of prey, as bears, wolves, foxes, dogs, wild cats, stoats, weasels, eagles, hawks and owls, and never spared by man; even domestic animals, as cattle, goats and reindeer, join in the destruction, stamping them to the ground with their feet, and even eating their bodies. Numbers also die from diseases produced apparently from overcrowding. None returns, and the onward march of the survivors never ceases until they reach the sea, into which they plunge, and swimming onwards in the same direction perish in the waves. These sudden appearances of vast bodies of lemmings, and their singular habit of persistently pursuing the same onward course of migration, have given rise to various speculations, from the ancient belief of the Norwegian peasants, shared by Olaus Magnus, that they fall down from the clouds, to the hypothesis that they are acting in obedience to an instinct inherited from ancient times, and still seeking the congenial home in the submerged Atlantis, to which their ancestors of the Miocene period were wont to resort when driven from their ordinary dwelling-places by crowding or scarcity of food. The principal facts regarding these migrations seem to be as follows. When any combination of circumstances has occasioned an increase of the numbers of the lemmings in their ordinary dwelling-places, impelled by the restless or migratory instinct possessed in a less developed degree by so many of their congeners, a movement takes place at the edge of the elevated plateau, and a migration towards the lower-lying land begins. The whole body moves forward slowly, always advancing in the
