VOL. XLIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 320 



As Providence in many instances has guided defenceless animals to make use 

 of the most necessary means for their security, why may not these, and other 

 itinerant birds, perform their long journeys in the night time, to conceal them- 

 selves from rapacious birds, and other dangers that day-light exposes them to ; 

 which nocturnal travelling of birds of passage he believes more than barely pro- 

 bable, from the following observations, which may serve in some degree to con- 

 firm it. 



Lying on the deck of a sloop on the north side of Cuba, Mr. C. and the 

 company with him, heard 3 nights successively flights of rice-birds, their notes 

 being plainly distinguishable from others, passing over their heads northerly, 

 which is their direct way from Cuba, and the southern continent of America, 

 whence they go to Carolina annually at the time that rice begins to ripen ; and, 

 after growing fat with it, return south back again. 



The flight of birds of passage over the seas has by some been considered as a 

 circumstance equally wonderful with other stories concerning them; and especi- 

 ally in regard to those with short wings, among which quails seem, by their 

 structure, little adapted for long flights, nor are they ever seen to continue on 

 the wing for any length of time; and yet their ability for such flights cannot be 

 doubted, from the testimony of many. Bellonius in particular reports, that he 

 saw them in great flights passing over and repassing the Mediterranean sea, at 

 the seasons and times they visit and retire from us. The same sagacity that in- 

 structs them to change climates, may also reasonably be thought to direct them, 

 and other birds of passage, to the narrowest part of our channel, to evade the 

 danger of passing a wide sea; though, by the many instances of birds driven 

 hundreds of miles from any land, there seems not that necessity for their finding 

 the straits of Calais, as the shortest passage to our island, they being not unable 

 to perform much longer flights. 



There are also winter birds of passage, which arrive here in autumn at the 

 time the summer birds depart, and go away in the spring season, when summer 

 birds return. These however are but few, there being only 4 sorts known, viz. 

 the fieldfare, redwing, woodcock, and snipe; which last two he has often known 

 to continue the summer here, and breed; so that the fieldfare and redwing seem 

 to be the only birds of passage that constantly and unanimously leave us at the 

 approach of summer, retiring to more northern parts of the continent, where 

 they breed, and remain the summer, and at the return of winter are driven 

 southerly from those frigid climates in search of food, which there the ice and 

 snow deprives them of. There are many others, particularly of the duck and 

 wading kind, that breed, and make their summer abode in desolate fenny parts 

 of our island. When the severity of our winters deprives them of their liquid 

 sustenance, necessity obliges them to retire towards the sea in numerous flights, 



VOL. IX. U u 



