154 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



tion, being carried far out of their course by the 

 prevailing westerly winds of this season, is very 

 great. Occasionally one makes the passage to Great 

 Britain, by following the ships and finding them at 

 convenient distances along the route, and I have been 

 told that over fifty different species of our more com- 

 mon birds, such as robins, starlings, grossbeaks, 

 thrushes, etc., have been found in Ireland, having, of 

 course, crossed in this way. What numbers of these 

 little navigators of the air are misled and wrecked 

 during those dark and stormy nights, on the light- 

 houses alone that line the Atlantic Coast ? Is it 

 Celia Thaxter who tells of having picked up her 

 apron full of sparrows, warblers, flycatchers, etc., at 

 the foot of the light-house, on the Isles of Shoals, 

 one morning after a storm, the ground being still 

 strewn with birds of all kinds that had dashed them- 

 selves against the beacon, bewildered and fascinated 

 by its tremendous light? 



If a land bird perishes at sea, a sea bird is equally 

 cast away upon the land, and I have known the sooty 

 tern, with its almost omnipotent wing, to fall down 

 utterly famished and exhausted, two hundred miles 

 from salt water. 



But my interest in these things did not last beyond 

 the third day. About this time we entered what the 

 sailors call the " devil's hole," and a very respectably 

 sized hole it is, extending from the Banks of New- 

 foundland to Ireland, and in all seasons and weathers 

 it seems to be well stirred up. 



