IVONSUCH 



delectable fry of just the right size; here are man- 

 made laws ensuring safety from molestation. Here 

 also (although the least important of all natural 

 reasons) are thousands of human eyes ready to see 

 and admire, perhaps many human beings who 

 would be the better for having their thoughts di- 

 verted, by the sight of beauty, from the humor 

 engendered by an ill lead at bridge or an irritating 

 drive on the golf course. 



Yet not a single migrant of this species veers 

 eastward to these desirable isles. They hold stead- 

 fast to the south. They must sleep and eat, but, 

 steady as the feather-end of the compass arrow, 

 they swing on and on, covering only a little less 

 than two hundred miles each day. If storms hold 

 them back, they make up time, with ever warmer 

 and warmer air whistling through their wings. 

 Around Cape Cod, past Cape Hatteras, along 

 Florida beaches — the hot sun of the tropics re- 

 placing the cold, blue shine of the Greenland mid- 

 night ; threading the West Indies, skirting Brazil- 

 ian jungles, and diving for strange fish off the 

 shores of the Argentine. The sun swings lower, the 

 last breath of warmth is strained from the air, as 

 Patagonia and Magellen's Straits vanish below the 

 horizon. After eleven thousand miles have passed 

 behind, the birds sight the gigantic ice barrier of the 

 Antarctic, and here the migration glow dies down 

 and expires. Here they sleep and preen their plum- 

 age, catching fish in company with penguins instead 

 of polar bears, their grey and white feathers il- 



116 



