THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD 141 
freeze and give out, and they go south after it and in 
spring they want to go back home.” 
“Yes, Sarah, that is one of the reasons, and yet birds 
start off oftentimes when food is still plenty, and every 
naturalist knows of the rush of the water-fowl northward 
so early every spring that they are often turned back by 
storms and have to retrace their flight, and they have 
all seen that Robins, Bluebirds, and Swallows, following 
too closely in the wake of the water-fowl, sometimes 
lose hundreds out of their flocks by cold and starvation. 
“Tf the fall journey is caused by lack of food, why 
does it begin when food is most plenty? At some of 
the Florida lighthouses the Wise Men have seen that 
the southward trip with some birds begins between the 
first and middle of July, at the time when the crop of 
insects and ripe seeds and berries is at its height. So 
the best answer that can be made is that ages ago, when 
the migrations began, they were connected with a food 
supply that changed more suddenly than at the present 
time, and that, even when the direct motive is lost, the 
habit remains fixed.” 
“That’s it; that’s a bully reason!” cried Tommy 
Todd, excitedly. ‘‘They’ve got the notion that they’re 
going travelling just so often and they can’t calculate 
the time right and so they get ready too soon; likely 
they haven’t got very good heads for planning. That’s 
the reason, Pop says, that every fall, when Ma and Aunt 
Hannah go up to Kent to visit Grandma Tuck, they are 
all ready on the stoop by half-past seven, when there’s 
never been a train from here to there before ’leven. If 
they were birds, they’d probably fly off as soon as it was 
