70 THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 



tricts, are occasionally met with on the British 

 coasts with particles of their downy nestUng 

 plumage still adhering to some of the feathers, 

 after a flight of at least 2000 miles. It must 

 not be supposed, however, that because the 

 impulse to migrate is inherited from their parents, 

 the ability to do so is equally hereditary. That 

 has to be acquired; the road has to be pointed 

 out by the more experienced guiding birds, and 

 the long, often circuitous, route has to be learnt 

 by the experience of not one but many annual 

 journeys to and fro. Wonderful therefore as this 

 order of migration is — and that it is a fact is proved 

 by overwhelming testimony at every station where 

 the passage of birds has been studied — there is 

 nothing abnormal about the proceeding; and we 

 see that the odd restless old birds that migrate 

 before the rest, incite the young birds to start, and 

 render the important service of showing those 

 young and inexperienced the way. A week or so 

 after the young birds have left, the adult males 

 begin their migration, having got over the moult 

 a little earlier than the females, the latter being 

 delayed somewhat by maternal duties, so that their 

 departure is a little later still. The rear of the 

 great migrating army is brought up by the birds 

 that from various causes have been either prevented 

 from starting with the rest or delayed on the way, 

 by such accidents as damaged flight-feathers or 

 maimed and wounded limbs. Astonishing as this 

 fact may be, it has been remarked and verified 



