332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



route in a southeasterly direction. When examples from Great 

 Britain were introduced into New England, they adapted themselves 

 readily to their new surroundings and reared young, but when the 

 season for migration arrived the inherited tendency to go in a south- 

 easterly direction asserted itself, and, according to Mr. Wm. Palmer, 

 of the U. S. National Museum, they all passed out into the broad 

 expanse of the Atlantic and were lost. 



For several decades it has been noted that a few species of birds 

 from Western Asia have been gradually extending their summer range 

 into northern Scandinavia. When these species migrate, instead of 

 going south through central Scandinavia or southwest along the coast 

 line, as do the original Scandinavian residents, they turn back east to 

 the point in Siberia whence they came, before turning southward to 

 spend the winter on the borders of India. 



Forty or more species of migratory birds occur as summer resi- 

 dents in the Yukon Basin, Alaska. Of these some fourteen species are 

 Pacific coast birds. With a single exception they are all thought to 

 reach the upper Yukon by crossing the Alaskan coast range of moun- 

 tains. This exception, according to Mr. W. H. Osgood, of the U. S. 

 Department of Agriculture, is the varied thrush (Hesperocichla 

 ncBvia), which apparently reaches its summer home by going up the 

 coast to the mouth of the Yukon, and thence following this river for 

 almost 2,000 miles. Equally abundant with it in this summer home is 

 the common snowbird (Junco hyemalis) of the eastern United States, 

 which reaches the Yukon Basin by way of the Mississippi Valley. 



Perhaps the longest straight-away flight made during the migra- 

 tions is accomplished by certain shore and water birds, as the tattler 

 [Heteractitis incanus), sanderling (Calidris arenaria), turnstone 

 {Arenaria interpres), and the pintail and shoveler ducks, which nest 

 in islands in the Bering Sea and spend the winter in the Fanning 

 and Hawaiian groups, a distance of some 2,200 miles. As the shore 

 birds above enumerated are probably unable to rest on the surface of 

 the water, the entire distance must be accomplished in a single flight. 

 It is difficult indeed to see how this line of migration could have been 

 established. Following the analogy of the Old World species before 

 mentioned whose path marks an ancient shore-line, we might presume 

 that there was at one time a land connection, or at least a chain of 

 islands between the Aleutian and Hawaiian groups, but on the contrary 

 the depths of the Pacific are profound between these points, and 

 there is not the slightest geological evidence on which to base a former 

 land connection. When it is recalled how slight a deviation at the 

 point of departure would suffice to throw them to the one side or the 

 other of the Hawaiian islands the accomplishment is truly marvelous. 

 In the absence of familiar landmarks and surrounded by a waste of 



