MIGRATION. 155 



"by plashy brink 



Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 

 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink, 



On the chafed ocean-side." 



But the summer is, as we have said, short. It 

 passes not into winter by the transition of a 

 mellowed autumn. As it sprang almost of a 

 sudden out of winter, so it retires ; but the wild 

 birds, instinct-taught, anticipate the time when 

 river and lake, pond and inlet, will be locked up 

 with ice. Their young are fledged, strong on 

 the wing, and now they commence their 

 southern journey, not to seek a breeding home, 

 but open lakes, open creeks, and seas wherein 

 the ice-floe is never witnessed, and from which 

 they may derive their sustenance. Such arc 

 our winter visitors, taking a broad survey of 

 the ornithology of our islands and the adjacent 

 continent. 



It is winter in England. In our fens and 

 meres, in our estuaries and lakes, and along 

 our coasts, thousands of wild fowl, harassed, 

 it may be, by the gunner, procure the means of 

 life. But if we have gained, so also have we 

 lost ; for on the approach of our winter, the 

 nightingale, and swallow, and wheatear, the 

 quail and the corncrake, and many more, which 

 we will not enumerate, have fled southwards to 

 their winter-quarters. The term, winter-quar- 

 ters, is relative ; they seek the congenial atmo- 

 sphere of a land over which the icy gales of our 

 northern winter are never wafted ; but our 

 island is a bounteous store-house — an Africa to 

 thousands of Arctic-reared birds, that are con- 



