OCTOBER 236 



whether they belonged to the insular or continental 

 type? He might even have offered some chopped 

 bacon to the travel-worn, hungry little wayfarer that 

 he found so ' tame ' on the rock. Nobody, one should 

 think, can have witnessed the daylight migration of 

 small birds across the ocean without some promptings 

 of compassion. Their weary little wings just serve to 

 carry them clear of the waves. When one of them 

 makes a resting-place of a passing ship, as so often 

 happens, instantly it buries its head in the scapular 

 feathers and goes fast asleep. 



There is work, no doubt, for collectors, seeing that 

 museums must be maintained; but for heaven's sake 

 let it be understood that, in the case of familiar species, 

 we shall be quite satisfied with the reports of com- 

 petent observers, without calling upon them to produce 

 the corpses which they have collected. 



We are no nearer understanding now what agency 

 guides the birds in migration than we were when the 

 late Professor Newton asked us to attribute it to 

 ' inherited, but unconscious, experience ' ; a somewhat 

 vague explanation which does not diminish our per- 

 plexity on learning from Herr Gatke that young 

 starlings are invariably the first migrants to arrive at 

 Heligoland in summer. It is easier to divine the cause 

 of old cuckoos being the next to arrive ; for it may be 

 supposed that they leave our shores so soon as the 

 summer flush of caterpillars becomes stinted. They 

 leave their offspring (which probably they have never 

 seen and would not acknowledge if they had) to follow 

 six weeks later. 



