6o Wild Birds and their Haunts 



author mentions : " I have also noticed that the first 

 flocks of these migratory sandpipers, which usually arrive 

 about the second week in August, are almost entirely 

 composed of young birds. The old birds arrive somewhat 

 later." Referring to the woodcock, the same book 

 says : ' ' When it first comes its flesh is short and tender, 

 whereas afterwards it eats stringy and is of a fibrous 

 flesh, as others of our fowls are." 



Even to the scientist in Nature study it appears 

 mysterious that young birds of, say from eight to ten 

 weeks old are able successfully to complete a lengthy serial 

 journey of some five hundred miles in the greatest safety. 

 It must be borne in mind that this is a maiden venture, 

 or original undertaking ; yet the same unerring certainty 

 is there as practised by their parents previously. Any- 

 one who on dark, starless nights has heard the babel of 

 voices of these myriads of migrants travelling past him 

 overhead, in one fixed direction and in undiminishing 

 numbers, for weeks and months, without the help of any 

 guiding mark discernible by the human eye, cannot fail 

 to be led by the supreme grandeur of this phenomenon 

 to speculate as to what kind of capacities the unfailing 

 performance of such an act is due. 



For centuries this question has received the most serious 

 consideration on the part of inquirers, but no final solution 

 of the problem has as yet been forthcoming. The greatest 

 amount of investigation of these unknown things produces, 

 seemingly, but the chaos of nothingness ; hence, in their 

 perplexity to account for this remarkable phenomenon, 

 scientists and observers have sought refuge in the assump- 

 tion of an " instinctive action " (as Gatke puts it) on the 

 part of birds, in virtue of which they adopted uncon- 

 sciously the right road towards the attainment of an un- 

 known goal. Alfred Newton's remarks on "Birds" 

 in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " rejects the idea of 

 instinct as a mere evasion of the difficulty of the question, 

 and as excluding all scientific investigation of the same. 

 According to his view, birds act unconsciously in a manner 

 suited to a certain purpose ; but what, one might ask, is 

 this but instinct ? 



