BIRD-LIFE ON THE MOORS IN SEPTEMBER. 88 



those of low-lying lands very much further to the north, such 

 as the South Siberian tundras. Thus while one bird a 

 Titlark, for example which has spent the summer on the 

 bleak uplands of Cheviot, may find a sufficient change in 

 seeking the shelter of the littoral plains, yet the migrant 

 instinct of another, specifically the same, but a denizen of a 

 lower region, may not be satisfied till the owner reaches its 

 appointed winter home in the extreme south of Europe. 



There is a certain analogy between some visible traits of 

 bird-life, and the aspirations, more or less latent, of our own 

 kind. If it be possible to conceive a man wholly divested of 

 all the trammels that the social and political cosmogony, 

 and, not least, that gold have imposed upon his freedom with 

 all the accumulated force of long custom how would he 

 spend the year ? Perhaps, very much the same as those 

 creatures actually do which still remain unfettered. In 

 summer, he would probably seek northern latitudes, cruise on 

 the verge of the Arctic ice, and retire southward before its 

 autumnal advance, to winter in sunny lands. Such, in fact, 

 is the custom of the fortunate few, as it is certainly the 

 innate, and all but universal instinct in the feathered biped. 

 Long ages of change and development have induced infinite 

 modifications as between the different organizations of the 

 latter ; many, falling from their former high estate, no longer 

 seek the Ultima Thule that once perhaps was the universal 

 home of all ; some, indeed, regard even a British summer 

 as a thing not to be endured, and treat the Pyrenees, the 

 Mediterranean, or the Sahara as the climatic limit of to-day 

 to-morrow the precession of the equinoxes may have changed 

 all that, but the process requires twice ten thousand years. 



In September the Arctic summer is over; the " midnight 

 sun," to use the tourist phrase, has set ; the ice is forming in 

 the sounds of Spitzbergen, and will soon envelop the whole 

 Arctic Archipelago, blocking the Kara Gates and the North 

 Asiatic seaboard. Before the cutting hailstorms, and the 

 approaching Polar night, the feathered world with one solitary 

 exception flee to the southward. As early as July the first 

 stray symptoms of movement become apparent at home, and 

 in September it is in full operation hardly a bird but by 



G 2 



