94 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



tend to believe less and less in a sixth sense or in a 

 seventh. When we have really explored all the high- 

 ways and by-paths of the five senses, and have learnt 

 where they can lead to, it will be time to think about a 

 sixth and seventh sense. 



The impulse of migration being so strong, drawing 

 the birds into its current as by a magnetic power, one 

 can hardly doubt the wisdom and the need of it. To 

 look at, it is more like the working of a law than a 

 habit ; the line of travellers as a whole might seem to 

 move responsive to law as stone dropping to earth 

 or stream running to sea. It would not be a great 

 stretch of imagination to see the redwing and fieldfare 

 rush in this light; it would not conflict with the 

 knowledge that migration is anarchy, for it is anarchy 

 only in the sense that there is no ruler and no 

 authority in the flock. This is an idea that may have 

 passed through the minds of other people who have 

 watched a moving host of wild creatures. If migra- 

 tion began as habit, perhaps it has grown to law 

 such is the idea which a skein of migrating eels in 

 the water or the line of birds in the air may give to 

 the watcher. But, suppose we accept the law, it is 

 still not clear in each case where the benefit lies. 

 The passage of the redwings and fieldfares is a 

 case in point. The journey out had hardly ended 

 ere the journey back began. The storm abated the 

 evening after the birds, jaded and famished, had 

 dropped among the sand dunes, and the hills and 



