378 THE GREAT SEASON-FLIGHTS. 



"It is highly probable (says Mr. Wilson, the American or- 

 nithologist) that they extend their migrations to the very pole 

 itself, amid the silent desolation of unknown countries, shut 

 out since Creation from the prying eye of man by everlasting 

 and insuperable barriers of ice and snow. That such places 

 abound with their suitable food, we cannot for one moment 

 doubt; while the absence of the great destroyer, man, and 

 the splendour of a perpetual day, may render such regions the 

 most suitable for their purpose." * 



The incredible numbers of aquatic fowl of all kinds 

 that join in these migratory flights, in addition to the 

 various land birds which likewise seek these far northern 

 nesting grounds, altogether surpass anything that we 

 can form an idea of when we reflect that the most 

 prodigious flights as yet recorded by observers merely 

 give an account of what occurs at a few isolated points ; 

 whereas countless flights of a similar character, which 

 are unseen and unrecorded, are annually going on 

 throughout the whole circumference of the Northern 

 Hemisphere, while those that take place in the antarctic 

 regions have of course never been witnessed, or taken 

 account of by man at all, for of those vast frozen 

 wastes we know practically nothing whatsoever. Many 

 of the great migratory flights in the northern circum- 

 polar regions moreover, keep out to seaward, some of 

 them perhaps in mid ocean, while others keep the 

 coast line in view, as a directing point where headlands 

 jut out into the sea. The inland flights, so far as can 

 be judged, usually guide their line of flight as we 

 have said by the courses of great rivers which run 

 north and south, like the Nile and the Mississippi. 



* Quoted by Mr. Robt. Gray, in his work on The Birds of the 

 West of Scotland, and the Outer Hebrides, publ. 1871, p. 354 (Article 

 "The Canada Goose"). 



