THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF MIGRATION 



The migrations of birds were probably among the first natural 

 phenomena to attract the attention and arouse the imagination of 

 man. Recorded observations on the subject date back nearly 3,000 

 years, to the times of Hesiod , Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle, and 

 others. In the Bible there are several references to the periodic 

 movements of birds, as in the Book of Job (39:26), where the inquiry is 

 made: "Doth the hawk fly by Thy wisdom and stretch her wings 

 toward the south?" The author of Jeremiah (8:7) wrote: "The stork in 

 the heavens knoweth her appointed time; and the turtledove, and the 

 crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming." The flight 

 of quail that saved the Israelites from starvation in their wanderings 

 through the Sinai wilderness is now recognized as a vast migration 

 between their breeding grounds in eastern Europe and western Asia 

 and their winter home in Africa. 



Of observers whose writings are extant, Aristotle, naturalist and 

 philosopher of ancient Greece, was one of the first to discuss the 

 subject of bird migration. He noted cranes traveled from the steppes 

 of Scythia to the marshes at the headwaters of the Nile, and pelicans, 

 geese, swans, rails, doves, and many other birds likewise passed to 

 warmer regions to spend the winter. In the earliest years of the 

 Christian era, Pliny the Elder, Roman naturalist, in his "Historia 

 Naturalis," repeated much of what Aristotle had said on migration 

 and added comments of his own concerning the movements of 

 starlings, thrushes, and European blackbirds. 



Aristotle also must be credited with the origin of some 

 superstitious beliefs that persisted for several centuries. One of these, 

 that birds hibernated, became so firmly rooted, Dr. Elliott Coues 

 (1878), * an eminent American ornithologist, listed the titles of no less 

 than 182 papers dealing with the hibernation of swallows. In fact the 

 hibernation theory survived for more than 2,000 years, and it was not 

 until early in the nineteenth century that its acceptance as an 

 explanation for the winter disappearance of birds was almost 

 completely abandoned. Even after this, a few credulous persons 

 suggested this idea as an explanation for the disappearance of 

 chimney swifts in the fall before bands from wintering swifts were 

 finally reported as taken by Indians in Peru (Coffey 1944). 



The followers of Aristotle believed the disappearance of many 

 species of birds in the fall was accounted for by their passing into a 

 torpid state where they remained during the cold season, hidden in 



'Publications referred to parenthetically by date are listed in the Bibliography, p. 102 



