CDUAlPTEffi 



EBEACffil 



SOMEWHERE across the vast dome of blue which 

 arches in flawless beauty above the Great Lakes on 

 fair May days are unblazed, mystic, invisible trails. 

 Unseen by human eye, unknown to human brain, 

 understood only by a marvellous God-planted in- 

 stinct, these trails extend now, as they have extended 

 for uncounted ages. The microscopic eye of science 

 scans the distant blue in vain for trace of them, or 

 for the unknown signs by which these trails are 

 followed with unerring certainty by uncounted hosts 

 of airy voyageurs. The scientist knows of the exist- 

 ence of the trails and of their myriad travellers ; he 

 knows that somewhere in the glowing south and 

 somewhere in the lonely north the unblazed trails 

 begin and end, and that they are marked here and 

 there, at proper intervals, by resting-places, for the 

 trailers. 



Some day, beyond the misty clouds of counted 

 years, ere brain's first feeble thought was rudely 

 scratched or chipped upon time-defying stone, the 

 God who made the birds held two of each race in 

 mighty hands and lovingly whispered to them the se- 

 crets of sky-paths and of their wondrous journeyings 

 to be. And with that knowledge, and with the power 

 to transmit it to their kinds, flew forth the earliest 

 pairs to test together the trails from south to north 



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