MIGRATION AND FLIGHT. 23 



time of the total eclipse of the moon, quite dark — about a dozen 

 gold-crested wrens were caught at the lantern. Their migration 

 commenced on the 28th of August, and continued until the 16th 

 of November. It seems strange how these tiny, weak birds are 

 able to brave crossing the stormy North Sea. Great numbers, 

 however — as well as other birds, great and small — perish when 

 •contrary winds and fogs set in during their flight. The year 

 1884 was noted in Scottish waters by the enormous abundance 

 of gulls of different species. He says garvies or sprats (culpea 

 sprattus), on which the gulls fed, were in tremendous abundance 

 in the Firth of Forth — being literally alive with them, hundreds 

 of tons being sold as manure. The exceptional abundance of 

 the minute Crustacea, known as " herring food," probably 

 accounts for the unusual abundance of these sprats, and this ex- 

 traordinary abundance of "herring food" so far south as the 

 Scottish coast may have been due to the great accumulation of 

 ice throughout the summer of 1884 along the West Coast of 

 Spitzbergen. The cooling of the water by this huge mass of ice 

 probably led to the retreat of the minute organisms, known as 

 "herring food," further south than usual. Sprats and other 

 fishes in great shoals followed their crustacean food, while gulls 

 and other sea birds naturally followed the fish on which • they 

 feed — thus illustrating the universal law of migration. The 

 whale follows the herring, the herring and sprat follow the 

 minute Crustacea, and these minute Crustacea will doubtless prey 

 upon life still more minute, until life itself is lost in water, and 

 thus our globe wheels on until even it, too, may be lost in space. 

 It is a corroborative fact, that, as the sprats did not enter the 

 Firth of Tay, neither did that estuary participate in the unusual 

 migration of gulls. 



If that ornithological problem migration is over to be solved, 

 no better plan can be adopted than by the British Association ; 

 and it is pleasing to know that similar observations are now 

 being made in Canada and in the United States. 



The stations on the ' East Coast of Scotland from which 

 reports were got extend from North Unst, Shetland, where the 

 light on the lighthouse is 230 feet above sea level, to St Abb's 

 Head, Berwickshire, where the light is 224 feet above sea level. 

 On the East Coast of England they include the Longstone light- 

 house (on the Fame Islands), and all the East and South-east 

 Coasts to the Hanois lighthouse, Guernsey, one of the Channel 

 Islands. 



On the West Coast of Scotland they extend from Cape Wrath, 



