46 WINTER WORK. 



Well we, perhaps, can understand why not in summer, because 

 of the family duties which engage them, and the intense 

 rivalry and jealousy of the males. These feelings, however, 

 die away with the summer months. Do they congregate in 

 the winter for warmth, or for food ? Scarcely the latter, 

 since it would be easier to obtain food singly. 



Then there are the birds of passage — those going and those 

 coming ; the Swift, the Swallow, the Cuckoo, and others 

 disappearing ; the Fieldfare, the Redwing, the Hooded Crow, 

 &c., coming. The latter, as of course you know, frequents 

 the shore and the adjacent fields now in search of food, and 

 at once attracts notice by the hood it wears. Where does 

 it raise its family } Does it ever breed in England } Why 

 does it come here at all ? 



Migration is almost as wonderful as hybernation. Before 

 it was so well established a fact as it is in the present day, 

 hybernation was much more extensively allowed. The 

 Swallow tribe in particular attracted most notice, as was but 

 natural, and they were all firmly believed to spend the winter 

 in this country, hidden up in caves and rock crevices, old 

 buildings and places similar to those where we find the bats ; 

 some thought even in the bottom of lakes and rivers buried 

 in the mud. Dr. Johnson in his usual dogmatic style, once 

 remarked in the course of conversation — " Swallows certainly 

 sleep all the winter. A number of them conglobulate together 

 by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw them- 

 selves under water and lie in the bed of a river." And 

 Gilbert White, of Selbome, could never bring himself to 

 totally disbelieve in their hybernation. Nor has the belief 

 died out even in the present day, for there was a discussion 

 about it in the pages of " Science Gossip" only a few months 

 ago. But this is rather digressing. 



There is often much talk about the " mysterious" instinct 

 which guides birds in their migrations. I confess I can see 

 little mystery in it, not nearly so much as in hybernation. 



Disbelieving totally, as I do, in what is commonly called 

 the " instinct" of the lower animals, and believing that the 

 whole animal creation possesses pretty well the same facul- 

 ties and reasoning powers as ourselves, nay, I may go further 

 and say, an immaterial and undying principle similar to our 

 own, the mystery commonly supposed to be connected with 



