THE WINTER RHUBARB 101 



under consideration, let me recall the case of the 

 martins to which reference was made in an earlier 

 chapter the case in which these birds starved to 

 death because in a particular season drought pre- 

 vented the hatching out of their insect food. 



Everyone knows that the martin is a bird of 

 very swift and powerful flight. Its estimated 

 speed is more than a mile a minute, and it habit- 

 ually remains hour after hour on the wing. It 

 was easily within the capacity of the martins that 

 starved to death in Xew England to have shifted 

 their location at the rate of more than a thousand 

 miles a day. 



And assuredly within half that distance, prob- 

 ably within two or three hundred miles at the 

 most, they would have found an abundant supply 

 of food. * 



Now the season at which the martins actually 

 starved was August; only a few weeks, therefore, 

 before the time of their regular autumnal migra- 

 tion. Had the birds lived another month they 

 would instinctively have begun a long journey 

 to the south, and a single night's flight would 

 have brought them to regions where no doubt 

 their food needs would have been abundantly 

 supplied. From a human standpoint, it would 

 seem only natural that the birds, deprived of 

 food, should have begun their seasonal migration 



