90 MIGRATION AND FLIGHT. 



myriads, and flying over wide seas, land, to partake of 

 a harvest introduced there from distant India. It is, 

 however, only the female Ricebird that migrates ; for of 

 the numbers visiting Carolina, it is said not a single male 

 Is ever found. 



The foregoing instances, while they assure us (if 

 assurance was necessary) that birds at wonted times 

 change their habitations, still add to, rather than remove, 

 the difficulties as to the real causes. But if of these we 

 must for the present remain in ignorance, we have enough 

 left in the actual facts of migration to call forth all our 

 wonder, in considering the regularity, order, and disci- 

 pline, with which these unaccountable journeys are con- 

 ducted, and the unknown compass placed within the 

 bosoms of these airy travellers, enabling them to go, and 

 return from, points thousands of miles apart, with as 

 much certainty as the sailor steers his ship across the 

 wide ocean by his skill in navigation, and that myste- 

 rious needle ever pointing to the north. Neither is this 

 instinct confined to birds ; it has been observed in turtles, 

 which cross the ocean from the Bay of Honduras to the 

 Cayman Isles, near Jamaica, a distance of 450 miles, 

 without the aid of chart or compass, and with an accu- 

 racy superior to human skill; for it is affirmed, that 

 vessels which have lost their reckoning in hazy weather, 

 have steered entirely by the noise of the turtles in swim- 

 ming. The object of their voyage, as in the case of 

 birds, is for the purpose of laying their eggs on a spot 

 peculiarly favourable. 



It is, indeed, this instinctive power and stimulus which 

 is the real point to excite our astonishment in the mi- 

 gration of birds; for when we take into consideration 

 what has been said of their rapid flight, which would 

 enable an Eagle in nine days, allowing him sixteen or 

 seventeen hours for repose, to go round the world, there 

 is nothing so very extraordinary in the journey of a 

 Swallow from the shores of England to those of Sierra 

 Leone in Africa, where a person, who resided there for 



