MIGRATION. 



BESIDES this regular distribution in summer over certain 

 well-marked areas, most birds have another winter home far- 

 ther south, and in going from one to the other they make 

 long nights called migrations, or movings. The causes of this 

 remarkable custom are so remote that, without the aid of the 

 geologist, we can hardly understand how the habit was ac- 

 quired, nor why, when once the birds are driven south by 

 cold, they do not stay there. But simpler questions than 

 these, questions which might not seem too hard for ourselves 

 to answer, as, in what manner they travel these great distances ; 

 how they find their way back to the same place, to the same 

 porch or bush, after a thousand miles of wanderings; why 

 we so seldom see them going, but only wake up to find them 

 come or gone these apparently easy questions have, until 

 recently, been a standing puzzle to the world. Many foolish 

 guesses have been made, wide of the mark, but at last, by 

 patient study, the facts have been discovered; and now all 

 seems so simple, so much like what we would do ourselves, 

 that we wonder at our not knowing it years ago. 



In the first place, it was settled that most of the smaller 

 birds flew by night, which sufficiently explained why we 

 neither saw them come, nor saw them leave. One moonlight 

 night in September, a number of years ago, I was awakened 

 from a very bad dream of burglars by hearing in my room a 

 noise that could not be explained as cat, rat, bat, or mouse. 

 The windows were open, and there was out of doors the dying 

 glimmer of a setting moon, but the room was dark; nothing 



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