THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD 139 
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The Travels of Birds 
‘‘ What becomes of the birds that are with us in summer ? 
Where and how do they spend the winter? By what 
roadways do they travel to their winter haunts? Do they 
prefer to journey by land or by water, and how do they 
find the way? 
‘We need not think that we, or anybody else of our day, 
are the first to ask these questions, for it is many hun- 
dreds of years since they first began to puzzle thinking 
people. At first, lacking any real knowledge of the sim- 
plest facts of nature, and not having as yet trained the 
eye to correct seeing, the people did as the ignorant do 
to this day, — they imagined fabulous reasons. The more 
impossible and wonderful or unnatural, the better, for 
it takes a trained mind oftentimes to realize that the 
most natural way is the best, and that the simplest way 
is the most natural. 
“Tt was in these far-back times that the foolish idea was 
started that the Swallows dived into the mud and there 
spent the winter, like the frogs. 
“Another stranger idea was that small birds crossed 
large bodies of water as passengers on the backs of large 
birds, such as Cranes, Ducks, and Geese, for people did 
not know enough of the structure of birds to realize that 
the machinery of the tiny Humming-bird is as fit for flying 
