262 CHADBOURNE oz a Flight of Killdeer Plover. [July 
off-shore, and blowing at the rate of forty miles an hour. After 
the earth had been hidden by clouds the greater velocity of 
the wind would not have been noticed, for the birds would 
have been carried onward as fast as the clouds below or around 
them, and it is well known that aballoon may move at a tremen- 
dous speed without the occupants knowing it if the earth is hidden 
from view. This must have brought the birds that started from 
near the coast over the ocean long before morning, and as they 
descended through the clouds expecting to feed and rest they 
would have found themselves over the water and carried along by 
a violent wind ; they would then have flown but little above the 
sea so as not to pass over any land without knowing it. 
At Charleston, South Carolina, on November 24, at 8 a.M., the 
wind was blowing forty miles an hour and was off-shore, and the 
storm centre was moving north at the rate of seven hundred miles 
in twenty-four hours. Some of the Plover nearer shore may have 
struggled against the off-shore wind long enough to get back to 
land, but those farther out must have been caught in the northern 
current and have been unable to make way against the much 
stronger gale blowing north on the eastern side of the storm centre. 
By the time they had been carried around the storm centre and 
had reached the weaker back current, they would have completely 
lost their bearings and have ceased to struggle against the storm. 
Even if they had held their own against the wind, they would have 
gained nothing, for the storm was moving north all the time and 
would have carried them with it. On the morning of Nov. 24 
the only points onthe Atlantic coast where the wind was blowing 
on shore were Cape Cod, Long Island, parts of the Massachusetts 
and Maine coasts, Nova Scotia and near Cape Hatteras, and the 
birds, carried along by the wind, would have been brought to land 
at these points. Around the storm centre the wind is continually 
working inward in a spiral, and therefore during the northward 
progress of the storm the birds were being concentrated more and 
more around the central point and by the time this point was 
near Block Island, N. Y. (Nov. 25), most of the Plover were 
circling around it with progressively smaller and smaller numbers 
on the periphery. Having reached the neighborhood of Block 
Island, the storm centre remained stationary for about forty-eight 
hours, and this undoubtedly gave time for all of the birds to reach 
land before the storm moved farther north. 
