670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the fall, but as a rule it lasts only a few days it is a farewell to 

 their summer homes. 



August is a most discouraging month to the student of birds. 

 Birds leave their accustomed haunts and retire to secluded places 

 to renew their worn plumages. They are silent and inactive, and 

 therefore difficult to find. Late in the month they reappear clad 

 in traveling costumes and ready for their southern journey. One 

 by one they leave us, and there are days late in August and early 

 in September when the woods are almost deserted of birds. Later 

 the fall migration becomes continuous, and each night brings a 

 host of new arrivals. 



The spring migration is scarcely concluded before the fall mi- 

 gration begins. July 1st, Tree Swallows, which rarely nest near 

 New York city, appear in numbers from the north and gather in 

 immense flocks in our marshes. Later in the month they are 

 joined by Bobolinks. Early in August the careful observer will 

 detect occasional small nights of Warblers passing southward, 

 and by September 10th the great southern march of the birds is 

 well under way ; it reaches its height between the 20th and last 

 of the month, when most of the winter residents arrive, and from 

 this time our bird life rapidly decreases. Some of the seed- and 

 berry-eaters remain until driven southward by the cold weather 

 in December. When they have gone our bird population is 

 again reduced to the ever-present permanent residents and hardy 

 winter visitants. 



In a careful study of the great divine's woi'ks, the Rev. J. A. Zahm finds 

 that St. Augustine clearly distinguishes between creation, properly so 

 called, and the work of formation and development. The former was 

 direct and simultaneous, while the latter, he contends, was gradual and 

 progressive. l 'As there is invisibly in the seed," he affirms, "all that 

 which in the course of time constitutes the tree, so also are we to view the 

 world, wdien it was created by God, as containing all that which was sub- 

 sequently manifested, not only the heavens with the sun and moon and 

 stars, but also those things which he produced potentially and causally, 

 from the waters and the earth, before they appeared as we now know 

 them. 1 ' The formless matter, which God created from nothing, was first 

 called heaven and earth, and it is written that " in the beginning God 

 created heaven and earth," not because it was forthwith heaven and 

 earth, but because it was destined to become heaven and earth. When 

 we consider the seed of a tree, we say that it contains the roots, the 

 trunk, the branches, the fruits, and the leaves, not because they are 

 already there, but because they shall be produced from it. "Verily," 

 says Mr. Zahm, "in reading these words, we can fancy that we are 

 perusing some modern scientific treatise on cosmogony instead of an 

 exposition of Genesis written by a father of the Church fifteen hundred 

 years ago." 



