The Quail and M.S. 263 



July, 1870. More recently a few have been seen in 

 Holderness. 



IT may seem strange that birds, such as the Quail 

 and Land-rail, remarkable for their limited 

 powers of flight, should be able to perform so 

 extensive a journey as that from England to Egypt ; 

 but doubtless these, and many species of small birds, 

 instead of flying continuously, proceed at intervals only, 

 journeying by night and resting by day. The celerity 

 with which swallows fly renders any exploit by them 

 on the wing credible enough ; and the steady flight of 

 gannets, geese and ducks, is obviously capable of carry- 

 ing them over a very large space in a short time. The 

 flight of birds generally may be estimated at from fifty 

 to one hundred and twenty miles an hour ; and if we take 

 the mean of this, we shall find it sufficient to enable the 

 migratory birds to perform the most extended journeys. 

 The wonder is not in the flight itself, but in the impulse 

 and instinct by which it is commenced and carried on. 

 Pennant finds no difficulty in accounting for the motive 

 of migrations ; a defect of food at certain seasons, or the 

 want of a secure asylum from the persecutions of man 

 during the time of courtship, incubation, and nutrition. 

 He considers that most of the birds which leave us in 

 spring to spend the summer elsewhere have been traced 

 to Lapland, a country of lakes, rivers, swamps, and alps 

 covered with thick and gloomy forests that afford shelter 

 during summer to these fowls, which in winter disperse 

 over the greater part of Europe. In these arctic regions, 

 in consequence of the thickness of the woods, the ground 

 remains soft and impenetrable to the wood-cocks, and 

 other slender-billed fowls ; and for the web-footed birds 

 the water affords innumerable larvae of the gnat. The 

 days are there long, and the beautiful meteorous nights 

 indulge them with every opportunity of collecting so 

 minute a food ; whilst mankind is very sparingly scattered 

 over those vast northern wastes. The migration of 

 winter birds of passage doubtless proceeds on the same 

 general law as that which regulates the movements of 



