BIRDS AND THEIR VOYAGES 95 



woods across the water; and, next morning being 

 bright and calm, the travellers returned eastward. 



How was it worth their while to travel hundreds of 

 miles to spend less than a full day in a spot which 

 offered them no rich banquet ? For, had it held 

 abundance of food, surely they need not have hastened 

 away next morning. Even about the hillsides, where 

 they were forced to halt the sea being in front 

 snow lightly covered the ground on the morning they 

 started back ; and as they approached their winter 

 homes that day farther east and north, they must 

 have found deeper snow, and harder soil. One day 

 they fled before snow and threatened famine; next 

 day they returned to a country still white and frosted. 

 It does seem as if this expedition had been in vain. 

 The law of migration must be urgent, forced, and to 

 good purpose ; but it may show, exceptionally, a flaw ; 

 and I cannot help thinking that this bird host might 

 have fared as well had it not journeyed into the 

 extreme south-west. 



Unfortunately, I have no exact itinerary of this 

 movement. The birds came west, and next day dis- 

 appeared east; returning, at the start, by the same 

 sky-route this is all I know of the itinerary. Where 

 the movement began I cannot tell. But I am sure, 

 through the vastness of the host, that it included 

 birds which started far to the east in England, if not 

 in the Midlands and even the north. Doubtless, as it 

 moved on, it gathered recruits from many snow and 



