GREAT MIGRATIONS OF ANTARCTIC GEESE. 289 



tivated fields; the injury they do to pasture lands is 

 even more extensive, for the geese 



" are often so numerous as to denude the earth, thus depriv- 

 ing the sheep of their food. On some estates (he continues) 

 mounted boys were kept, driving up the flocks with loud 

 shouts, but their labours were profitless: fresh armies of 

 geese, on their way north, were continually pouring in, mak- 

 ing a vast camping ground of the valley, till scarcely a blade 

 of grass remained." * 



In the northern hemisphere the arrival of the geese 

 in the arctic regions is quickly followed by the ap- 

 pearance of innumerable flocks of birds of various de- 

 scriptions, which are for the most part arriving after 

 migratory flights of many thousand miles, to rest amid 

 these northern wilds. For a considerable distance after 

 crossing the arctic circle, the barren grounds which 

 extend in this region right across the great continents 

 of Europe, Asia and America, are known to consist 

 for the most part of lakes and swampy moorlands; 

 and except in Greenland there is also, in all these 

 lands adjacent to the arctic circle, an immense area 

 of country dotted over here and there by dense thickets 

 of bush, which affords admirable shelter for the numerous 

 feathered tribes of land birds, which in addition to the 

 myriads of water-fowl, arrive in such numbers that the 

 Arctic Zone at this season becomes a veritable museum 

 of natural history for the ornithologist; while it also 

 oifers a comparatively untouched, and almost boundless 

 field of investigation to the botanist. 



The transmutation which is produced by the sudden 

 break-up of the arctic winter, and the almost imme- 

 diate change to summer, is of so rapid and wonderful 



* Idle Days in Patagonia, by W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., 1893, p. 61. 

 VOL. II. 19 



