20 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



And I take care that the rites shall not be violated ; that 

 my guests shall never have cause to regret their choice. 



But they cannot stay with us. They come when our 

 daffodils are all abloom, and go when the roses are fading. 

 It is a far cry from London to Magdala, but the nightingale 

 goes away even farther than that, and then in the Spring it 

 turns northward again, and, by-and-by, with myriads of other 

 birds, comes back to us to find the lilacs in flower, and the 

 home-staying thrush with young ones already in the nest. 



And they come in strange company. Sometimes the wild 

 swan, quite an island for the little birds, flies winnowing 

 the air beside them ; sometimes a flight of hawks, but with 

 their minds too full of their journey to think of harming their 

 small fellow-voyagers ; always with the sound of a multitude 

 about them, and the murmuring of innumerable wings. 

 Pitch dark the night, but somewhere or another is a leader, 

 and they follow, wild duck and swallow, sea-fowl and dove, 

 broad-winged geese and tiny gold-crest wrens, an instinct- 

 driven mob that, in spite of all perils of storm and of distance, 

 keeps its course, with dogged courage, and steers straight for 

 the land that is to be its summer home. Lighthouses have 

 become our best observatories for these annual transits, and 

 the descriptions that are given of the mobbing of the great 

 sea-lanterns by the hurrying flights of strangely assorted 

 birds, are so curious as to be scarcely credible. What they 

 suppose it to be, this bright revolving light in the dark waste. 



