WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



thrushes, and seed-eating birds, as well as water- 

 fowl, annually pass from island to island of the 

 West Indies, and visit Bermuda, Newfoundland, 

 and other places far from the American mainland. 

 This implies not only a power of continuous loco- 

 motion for hundreds of miles, but also a very swift 

 pace, since a bird cannot take enough food into 

 its stomach to supplj^ its sj'-stem for more than a 

 few hours, on account of the celerity with which 

 its highly active organization uses up nutriment. 

 A bird is like a high-pressure engine with small 

 furnaces, which must be constantly fed with fuel 

 in order to keep up steam. The Mediterranean 

 is not an obstacle to the semi-annual transfer of 

 feathered population between Europe and Africa; 

 Great Britain's quota crosses both the Channel 

 and the North Sea; Japan and the Philippines 

 are stocked from China or distant islands, while 

 the remotest parts of the Pacific archipelago are 

 visited by small, migratory land-birds as well as 

 wandering sea-fowl, at the expense of traversing, 

 sometimes, two thousand miles of open ocean. 



What is possible over the sea may be easily un- 

 dertaken above land, and some European ornithol- 

 ogists assert that certain small warblers habitually 

 make their spring journey in a single night of un- 



102 



