MIGRATION 



fish snatched at brief intervals from the edge of 

 the ice. She stakes the hatching and the feeding 

 of the young against the swift passing of the mid- 

 night sun, and scarcely is the brood awing before 

 the meagre foliage blackens, the soil turns to iron, 

 and the last ripple freezes over. She has won, but 

 only by a margin of hours. 



All along the Arctic shores from Labrador to 

 within a few hundred miles of the pole, we from 

 aloft now discern a faint glow — our imagined glow 

 of the birth of the instinct of migration. It increases, 

 and soon the restlessness of the birds is changed to 

 impatience, and impatience to complete surrender 

 and these bits of northernmost life beat southward 

 across the face of the planet. There are thousands 

 upon thousands of them. They have ceased to 

 be every-Arctic-Tern-in-the-world, they are not 

 Sterna paradisaea, they are no longer parents or 

 young or this or that individual, but a unified co- 

 hort of organisms set apart, obsessed, glowing at 

 fever heat with the thralldom of migration. 



In the face of unknowable mystery I often imag- 

 ine myself the Creator, or, as in this case, the Insti- 

 gator of Instinct, and plan out what seems wisest 

 and best. This exercise frequently shows me why 

 the obvious is seldom probable. In regard to these 

 migrants I should without hesitation lead them to 

 Bermuda. Here, as I shall repeat elsewhere in this 

 volume, is a compact swarm of islands with an in- 

 finity of rocky crags and caves and beaches fit for 

 safe perching and sleeping; here are multitudes of 



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