The innumerable foes which prey upon the help- 



Heralds i ess> give scant grace to the weaklings and 

 of March. ^ baffled and weary But wfay should ftU 



this immense congregation have listened to the 

 ancestral cry, and from meadow and moor and 

 the illimitable dim-sea of the fallowlands come 

 singly and in flocks and in immense herds and 

 in a cloudlike multitude, as sheep at the cry 

 of the herdsman, as hounds at the long ulula- 

 tion of a horn, while thousands of their clan 

 remain deaf to the mysterious Voice, the im- 

 perative silent mandate from oversea ? Of 

 these, again, countless numbers merely move 

 to another region, and mayhap some cross the 

 salt straits only to return ; or as many, it may 

 be, leave not at all the familiar solitudes, and 

 at most show by cloudy flights and wild and 

 fluctuating gyrations the heritage of blind 

 instinct, which, if it cannot be satiated by far 

 pilgrimage, must at least shake these troubled 

 hearts with sudden inexplicable restlessness. 

 It is calculated, again, that myriads of skylarks 

 merely use our coasts as highways on their 

 journey from the far south to the far north 

 ... in this, too, exemplifying another strange 

 law or manifestation of the mystery of 

 migration, that the birds which move furthest 

 north in their vernal arrival are those which 

 penetrate furthest south when they turn again 



92 



