FEBRUARY 33 



available for the multitude, they would be too much 

 exhausted to search for it. It is one of the mysteries 

 of migration, how birds can perform these long nights 

 without nourishment. I have watched them crossing 

 the eastern Mediterranean and alighting, sometimes on 

 a passing ship, sometimes on a barren rocky islet where 

 there was not even a drop of fresh water. They tuck 

 their heads back among their feathers and go to sleep 

 at once. 



Since this trivial note was written, several years ago, 

 my friend Mr. Eagle Clarke has published his Studies 

 in Bird migration, 1 which fill two fat volumes crammed 

 with information at first hand. Herr Gatke conducted 

 his observations comfortably, never having to move 

 more than a mile from his own fireside. He had but 

 to register the passage of birds, and this he did faith- 

 fully, adding considerably to our understanding of their 

 seasonal movements. Far more laborious were the 

 conditions under which Mr. Eagle Clarke worked. He 

 shrank not from a month's imprisonment in the Eddy- 

 stone Lighthouse, nor from tossing for a like period on 

 board the Kentish Knock Lightship. He spent his 

 holidays on dreary wastes like the Flannan Islands, 

 Sule Skerry, St. Eilda and Fair Isle, 2 intended to do so 

 in 1898 on the Isle of Ushant (Ouessant), the most 



1 London, Gurney and Jackson, 1912. 



2 This name contains a delusive suggestion of fair scenery and 

 climate ; but the word ' fair ' is our rendering of the Old Norse far, 

 sheep, and was bestowed of old by Scandinavian rovers who found 

 pastures there for their scanty flocks. Even so the mountain along- 

 side of Helvellyn is disguised by the name Fairfield, suggestive of 

 villadom, but representing the Norse fecrf jail, sheep fell, 



C 



