AUTUMN, 1912 291 



deed! Ah! liow easy to ask that question; how often 

 we ask it and there is no answer but the old one; because 

 of the eternal desire in us, which must have fretted 

 even the lieurts u{ the men wlu; dwelt in caves; to 

 reveal, to testify, to point out the path to a new en- 

 chanted realm, which we have discovered; to endeavour 

 to convey to others some faint sense or suggestion of 

 the wonder and delight which may be found in nature. 



We say, and I am here speaking of my own peculiar 

 people, the naturalists, that birds too, like ourselves, 

 may be pulled two ways, and that two conflicting im- 

 pulses may be the cause of one of the most pathetic 

 of Nature's innumerable little annual tragedies. This 

 is when a pair of swallows are rearing a late brood, and 

 before the time comes for the younger to i\y are them- 

 selves overtaken and borne away to the south by the 

 irresistible migratory instinct. 



It happened that on the very day of my arrival at 

 Wells, October 17, I noticed a pair of martins still 

 feeding their youu'j^ in a nest under the eaves above a 

 sweetstuff shop, within two or three doors of the Wells 

 post-office. Now I shall see for myself, I said resolving 

 to keep an eye on them. There were no other martins 

 or swallows of any kind in Wells at that date: a fort- 

 night earlier I had witnessed the end of the swallow 

 migration, as I thought, on the South Devon sea-coast. 

 I saw them morning after morning in numbers, travel- 

 ling along the coast towards the Isle of Wight, which 

 is one of their great crossing-places, until they had all 

 gone. 



