THE HOME OF A BIRD 175 



to come, home may mean much more than this ; I 

 have so limited my statement that I may say that to 

 the bird it means not less. But I will not ask my 

 readers to accept such a statement without some 

 proof. I might, perhaps, have been content to rest 

 it upon the authority of Professor Newton, who in 

 his "Dictionary of Birds" has stated that it is the 

 "passionate love of the old home" that brings back 

 the bird to its former haunts a statement quite 

 unique in a work that for erudition and severely 

 judicial restraint is unsurpassed in the literature of 

 ornithology. But I will bring the matter yet nearer 

 home. 



As is known by all, birds are not scattered hap- 

 hazard about the world. Some species inhabit 

 a comparatively limited area, and remain there 

 throughout the year ; in fact, throughout their lives. 

 Others, having reared their young during the summer 

 in one land, upon the approach of the colder season 

 depart from it and pass to some other and more 

 genial country. The paths by which such birds go, 

 or migrate, are fixed ; they pass in definite directions 

 over definite tracts of land and sea, and arrive in 

 definite and sufficiently well-known countries at their 

 journey's end, We know therefore, that each kind 

 of birds has its place or places on the face of the 

 earth, that it knows them and the way connecting 

 them, and keeps to both. 



To narrow down the issue, the Rook, although also 

 in part a migrant from and to other lands, has an 

 internal migration within the bounds of our own 

 country, and often enough within those of the same 

 county. At the season of migration a colony of rooks 



