184 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 



nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers 

 which I had for some time been watching, 

 flying high, but well within easy ken, and 

 these dense, hardly discernible clusters 

 hirundine nebulae, as it were were all 

 these but parts of one innumerable host, the 

 main body of which was passing far above 

 me altogether unseen? The conjecture was 

 one to gratify the imagination. It pleased 

 me even to think that it might be true. 

 But it was only a conjecture, and meantime 

 another question presented itself. 



When this daily procession had been no- 

 ticed for two or three afternoons, it came to 

 me as something remarkable that I saw it 

 always in the same place, or rather on the 

 same north and south line, while no matter 

 where else I walked, east or west, not a 

 swallow was visible. Had I stumbled upon 

 a regular route of swallow migration? It 

 looked so, surely; but I made little account 

 of the matter till a month afterward, when, 

 in exactly the same place, I observed robins 

 and bluebirds following the same course. 

 The robins were seen October 26th, in four 

 flocks, succeeding each other at intervals of a 

 few minutes, and numbering in all about 130 



