46 
spring, the further south it goes to winter. (6) The other remarkable 
Jaw was, that not one single Jand bird has been known to breed in the 
Southern Hemisphere and habitually winter in the Northern. 
Accidental visits of southern birds were doubtful evidence. 
In order of migration, the early starters in autumn were birds 
in all. stages of plumage,—old barren birds, odd birds that had been 
unable to find a mate, or birds whose nests had been desti:oyed too 
laie.in the season to allow them to make a second nest. Thus the 
instinct of migration was not checked by parental instinct. This 
premature migration had its uses ; for when the peviod of migration 
of any species really tegivs, astounding as the fact was, it was 
nevertheless true that the birds of the year were the first to migrate, 
birds which had never migrated before. These birds had inherited 
from their parents an irresistible impulse to migrate, but no infallible 
knowledge of road. It might take them years to Jearn the various 
landmarks necessary to keep them from straying from the route.: but 
they were doubtless led by some avant couriers. By the time 
that the birds of the year had left, roughly, a week, the males had 
finished their autumnal moult ; and the second week of the migration 
of any species generally marked the passage of the males ; most of the 
females migrated during the third week ; whilst the fourth was de- 
voted to the cripples, which came straggling in as best they might, in 
an almost ludicrous manner—birds which had Jost one leg or some of 
their toes, birds with half a tail or a great hole in one wing, birds with 
one mandible abnermally long, or some other defect. In sprixg the 
order was slightly varied ; the adult males came back first from Afvica ; 
then adult females, who were followed by the birds of the year. As in 
the autumn the cripples brought up the rear. Birds in migracion often 
lost their way—taking the wrong turning, the wrong stream of 
migration, and made their appearance in our island as strangers from 
Siberia, Southern Europe, and not unfrequently North America, mostly 
birds of the year. 
The object of his lecture, Mr. Gordon said, had been to show, 
however feebly, that every bird, when not necessary for the food of 
man, was worthy of its beautiful life, as a link in the Natural History 
of its chosen country,—evidence sometimes of transcendent value. 
Birds had been his humble life’s companions, cheery, ethereal, 
devotional, sympathetic, for 25 years through many long thousands of 
miles of upland and dale, in some of the most lovely hills and vales of 
England ; and he was only endeavouring to pay a lifelong debt in 
pleading for their life. No region of the earth was more favoured by 
the boldest and most resolute of birds than England. In the South of 
France, only 60 birds nest out of 350 species frequenting a cherished 
spot. In England probably quite 400 nest or would nest if we would 
let them. England ought to be a garden of birds, and would be if 
the Chinese or Turks or North American Indians inhabited it. 
But no English shrine had more hold on birds than Brighton. 
Brighton was consecrated by names of great lustre in ornithology— 
Gould, Booth, Swaysland, and many others, and by its world-famed. 
Museums and Aquarium. And if birds mark the past history of a 
place, the wild birds still’ in their poetry and romance think that 
