BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



been taken five years in succession in Georgia, each 

 time after a breeding season in Canada. A gull 

 nestling banded in England has been discovered 

 three thousand miles away in Senegal, Africa, 

 while black-headed gulls banded in Prussia have 

 been traced to Barbados and eastern Mexico. 



As is almost always the case with new experi- 

 ments, there are unexpected results. Hundreds of 

 nestling house wrens have been banded by an 

 enthusiast in Ohio, and instead of the same pairs 

 of cheerful little optimists rearing brood after 

 brood, the fateful numbers on their tags revealed 

 a most reprehensible state of affairs. When any 

 one pair of birds finished building and laying and 

 rearing their young, barely two days passed before 

 they consummated a divorce, found new mates 

 and industriously began new nests. One bird 

 reared four broods in two years with the assistance 

 of four different mates. 



Future methods of ferreting out more migration 

 secrets await discovery and application by anyone, 

 and the few hints I have been able to suggest are 

 as nothing compared with the field which lies 

 at the very door of any of us who are unwilling to 

 follow blindly in the conventional footsteps of 

 preceding bird-lovers. But we must not delay 

 too long. Artificial forests of rubber trees are 

 replacing safe coverts of jungles; forest fires and 

 ruthless wood-pulp vats destroy more of the haunts 

 of birds than can ever be replaced, and in thou- 

 sands of miles of China the masses of humanity are 



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