2976 Tue ZooLtocist—Marcs, 1872. 
have done. It seems only necessary to look into the eye of a 
pigeon to be assured that that organ alone serves to guide him 
through “realms of air,” and teaches him to recognise each object 
in his passage; but there is another question about the pigeon 
which has hitherto scarcely been discussed with that sobriety, that 
sincere love of truth which it merits: how does the young pigeon, 
taken for its first flight a distance of ten miles from its home in 
Spitalfields in a closed cage and a covered luggage-van—how, by 
what sense or instinct, does that pigeon find its way across country 
it has never seen, nor heard, nor smelled, being deprived of all 
accepted means of recognition, eyes, ears and nose? how is it such 
a pigeon will circle once or twice or three times, wide and wider 
and widest, and then go off in a direct line, and fly with unfailing 
certainty to its birth-place in that peristeronic metropolis? That 
subject must be deferred for the present. 
“ About the end of July, or beginning of August, great numbers of shore 
birds come into our harbours, and find their way from the mouths of the 
rivers to a considerable distance inland. Gray plovers, godwits, knots, 
whimbrel, greenshanks, redshanks, dunlin, and many other ‘ waders,’ con- 
tinue to arrive until the end of August, and the shores and mudflats, which 
were so deserted during the summer while the birds were away nesting, now 
present a most animated appearance. Flocks of various species, and of 
various sizes and colours, from the tiny brown stint (Tinga minuta) to the 
great gray heron, are scattered over the ground in all directions; now feeding 
busily as they follow the receding tide, now flying with noisy call to some 
more attractive spot. As we look down upon them from the sea-wall, they 
appear to be all much of the same colour, and are difficult to distinguish 
upon the brown mud over which they are running. See them in the air, 
with upturned wings, and what a different appearance they present. As 
the sun strikes upon the pure white of the under parts, borne swiftly 
onwards by rapid wings, the eye is almost dazzled at the bright contrast. 
Individuals are soon lost to sight as they fly closer together, and the entire 
flock, gradually lengthening out, sweep across the harbour like a long wave, 
now light, now dark, as the under or upper portions of the plumage are 
presented to view. Naturalists who visit the sea-side at the period of 
migration to which we have alluded cannot fail to admire the wonderful and 
graceful evolutions which these birds perform upon the wing; whilst those 
who reside upon the coast throughout the year must hail with satisfaction 
the arrival of these feathered strangers, whose presence adds so much to the 
beauty of the scenery, and relieves, to such an extent, the monotony of sea 
and sky.”"—P. 46. 
