upon the autumnal wind of exile. Naturalists The 



have proved, however, that countless hordes of Heralds 



. of March 



skylarks actually arrive from Northern Europe 



to winter in our country. Are these birds 

 moved by a different instinct from that which 

 impels the majority of their kind ? Have they, 

 through generations following one another in 

 the path of an accident, forgotten the sunlands 

 of the common ancestral remembrance, and, 

 having found Britain less snowbound and 

 frostbound than the wastes of Esthonia and 

 Pomerania, been content, when driven before 

 the icy east wind, to fare no further than our 

 bleak, and yet, save in the worst winters, 

 relatively habitable inlands ? Again, naturalists 

 have observed a like movement hitherward in 

 winter from Central Europe. There may be 

 observed in the early spring as regular an 

 emigration as, on a perhaps not vaster scale, 

 an incalculable immigration. Apparently, 

 most if not all of the myriads of skylarks 

 which are undoubtedly with us throughout 

 the winter are these immigrants from Northern 

 and Central Europe. Those who come in 

 February and in still greater numbers in March 

 and April (and the later the arrivals the 

 further north the goal, it is said) are the 

 ' strayed revellers ' from the South, the home- 

 bred birds home again. In our remote 



93 



