184 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 
nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers 
which I had for some time been watching, 
flying high, but well within easy ken, and 
these dense,-hardly discernible clusters — 
hirundine nebule, as it were — were all 
these but parts of one innumerable host, the 
main body of which was passing far above 
me altogether unseen? The conjecture was 
one to gratify the imagination. It pleased 
me even to think that it might be true. 
But it was only a conjecture, and meantime 
another question presented itself. 
When this daily procession had been no- 
ticed for two or three afternoons, it came to 
me as something remarkable that I saw it 
always in the same place, or rather on the 
same north and south line, while no matter 
where else I walked, east or west, not a 
swallow was visible. Had I stumbled upon 
a regular route of swallow migration? It 
looked so, surely; but I made little account 
of the matter till a month afterward, when, 
in exactly the same place, I observed robins 
and bluebirds following the same course. 
The robins were seen October 26th, in four 
flocks, sueceeding each other at intervals of a 
few minutes, and numbering in all about 130 
