VIEWS ON MIGRATION. 7 



peculiar habit was believed in hundreds of years 

 ago in Scandinavia, Germany, and elsewhere. Such 

 accomplished men as Linnaeus, Buffon, and Cuvier, 

 were supporters of the theory. The whole subject 

 has been repeatedly discussed before such illustrious 

 bodies as the Royal Society of England and the 

 French Academy of Sciences, finding a place in the 

 archives of each. Positive statements hav'e also 

 been recorded in our own Philosophical Transac- 

 tions^ as well as in the Memoirs of the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences, and elsewhere. 

 Again, it is not a little remarkable that, speaking so 

 far as the British Islands are concerned, of some 

 twenty-five common summer migrants, the Swallows 

 (collectively), and Swift [Cypselus apiis), are almost 

 the only species that have been said to hibernate. 

 Now hibernation was attributed to birds in our 

 islands so early in the annals of Ornithology that 

 the probability is these species were the only ones 

 whose disappearance in autumn was remarked at all. 

 No other birds that visit us in spring are so 

 noticeable as these birds : they spend their lives 

 in the open, coursing about the air, and haunting 

 the very dwelling-places and cities of men. Small 

 wonder then that their appearance in spring and 

 their disappearance in autumn so regularly and so 

 suddenly fixed the attention of observers, and 

 excited their curiosity. The migration of birds 

 w^as little understood in those days, and double 

 flights of five thousand miles between Africa and 

 England were yet undreamed of. 



