THE DANGERS BY THE WAY 



of migration, hundreds of birds have been found 

 dead or dying about the base of the statue. For- 

 tunately it is not now so brilliantly lighted as it 

 was when first it was erected, and is therefore not 

 so destructive to the winged travelers. 



But real lighthouses do not dim their beacons. 

 The more powerful their light the greater their 

 value to man and their danger to birds. Placed 

 in exposed, conspicuous places they seem to be 

 especially designed to destroy migrating birds. 

 There is not a lighthouse along our coast which 

 has not its ghastly record of birds killed, but 

 some of them seem to do much more harm than 

 others. 



A naturalist who spent a misty October night 

 in the lighthouse on Cape Hatteras tells of seeing 

 thousands of small birds flying around the tower 

 at one time ; he writes : "The whole element was 

 ablaze with them shining in the rays of the light 

 like myriads of little stars or meteors." So many 

 struck the light that night that he gathered three 

 hundred and fifty dead birds about the balcony 

 of the watch room and one hundred and forty 

 125 



