332 Wonders of the Bird World 



Yet these same species also migrate along the sea-coasts, 

 and their lines of migration have been assigned to them by 

 some writers, as if there were an irrevocable law which 

 guided their movements. I remember also that for three 

 days in succession in the spring of 1881, Turtle-Doves 

 lighted on the s.s. Ancona as we went down the Medi- 

 terranean. They were following no direct line of migra- 

 tion, but were simply bent on going northwards as fast 

 as their wings could carry them across the sea. 



To gain an idea of what migration means, let us take 

 the case of the Swallow, about which a good deal is known. 

 Our English Swallow finds its winter home in Africa, and 

 I have already alluded (p. 83) to the draggled state in 

 which it finally arrives in its winter quarters. On the 

 route there is no great barrier of water likely to arrest the 

 powerful flight of a bird like our common Swallow, so that 

 it meets with no serious obstacle in its progress southward. 

 We know that it arrives on the coast of West Africa, and 

 spends the winter there, as we have specimens in the 

 British Museum to prove the fact, but by what route does 

 it go? Across the Mediterranean direct, or by the short 

 cut by Gibraltar, or from Italy to Malta, and so to Algeria, 

 and across the Sahara ? Or does it follow the coast-line 

 and so come to Liberia and the Gold Coast ? 



A Swallow may even arrive in its West African home by 

 the other great migration route, viz. by the Nile Valley, the 

 course followed by so many European birds. We know 

 that vast numbers of our common Swallow visit the Cape 

 Colony, and Mrs. Monteiro tells us how a swarm of these 

 little birds took refuge in her house at Delagoa Bay after 

 a storm, and sat in rows on the cornice and the bedstead 

 till the morning sun beckoned them out again, minus 

 three of their number who perished from the cold. This 

 direct Nile route is taken by many species, and among 

 those which reach the Cape Colony and the Transvaal are 



