The Scottish Naturalist. 91 



raonths pass, and the whole host returns — again to encounter 

 similar dangers. 



Season after season, year after year, this wonderful ebb and 

 flow of migration continually rolls on, not in these parts only, but, 

 on both sides of the Equator, and in every portion of the globe 

 does this law prevail ; sufficient to make a man pause, and 

 think of the mighty works of the Creator, and imbue him with 

 a sense of the Supreme Being's great wisdom, power, and be- 

 nificence to the weakest of His creatures, who are enabled 

 without guide, wdthout compass, nevertheless with unerring 

 certainty, to find their way to their distant homes. Even 

 were the route handed down from generation to generation, 

 and the old birds to pilot their young back to the very 

 spot of their birth, it would be wonderful enough ; but when we 

 take into contemplation that the old birds, as soon as the 

 renewal of their primaries after the first moult will admit of it, 

 take their departure and leave their young to follow as best 

 they may, and that the newly fledged nestling, urged by some 

 wonderful instinct, should undertake this journey of hundreds 

 of miles, without the guidance of their parents, on whom one 

 would have supposed the whole responsibility of their safe 

 conduct would have rested, and yet reach in safety their final 

 •destination, it is marvellous indeed. Neither, it is said, do the 

 young return in spring with their parents, nor go so far north as 

 the old birds; but these points I purpose touching on here- 

 after. 



Not only is it the gift of flight, but the wonderful sense of 

 sight with which a bird is endowed, and the great faculty of 

 memory — call it instinct if we will — which enables him with 

 unerring precision to make the land, the very headland perhaps 

 from which he started months before. While some proceed 

 directly inland to the place of their birth, others will trace their 

 way along the coast from headland to headland, one, perhaps, 

 recognising some stream up which he ascends, and taking 

 a distant hill or some well-known object as a guide, finally wings 

 his way back to the very spot, it may be the very nest, he left 

 the autumn before, and here patiently awaits his mate, who 

 follows him in the course of a week or ten days. The fact of 

 the males preceding the females is well known to take place 

 in most of our summer visitants. In juxtaposition to this, in the 

 case of the woodcock, on the authority of Mr. Selby, the first 

 flights in autumn are composed almost entirely of females. 



