8 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
stormy waters of the great North Sea,—and rarely do we find a 
finer and more intelligent body of men than those employed in this 
important and trustful service. 
It has long been a well-known fact that, during the period of 
the autumn migrations, large numbers of birds of various species 
immolate themselves by dashing, during the night time, when in 
full migratory swing, against the thick glasses which surround the 
lanterns of the various lighthouses on our shores, more particularly 
those situated on the eastern and southern coasts. I have known 
flocks of migrating Starlings settle in the night time on the top of 
a lighthouse, where they continued for a long time to keep up a 
continual chattering, astonished perhaps at the novelty of the 
situation. Numbers of small birds will often hover for hours to 
and fro in the blaze of light without striking the glass, like moths 
on a summer evening when the hall-door is open and the lamp 
lighted. Sometimes, too, on dark and misty nights flocks of 
Curlew and Whimbrel, like spirits of the lost, wail and scream 
round the solitary lamp-trimmer in his lonely pharos, or troops of 
Gray Plover and Dunlin whirl past in the blaze cast forth by 
highly-polished lenses—shape, size or colour as distinctly apparent 
in each individual bird as if seen by the light of noonday. Itisa 
curious sight indeed for the lonely night-watcher to see the deluded 
little birds beating themselves to death against the polished pane, 
or to hear the thump as something heavier—Blackbird or Field- 
fare—strikes and is hurled back smashed and senseless into the 
abyss. It seems easy enough for the spectator unaccustomed to 
the scene, bewildered and dazed by the blaze of light within the 
lamp-room, to slip and pitch headlong through the glass into the 
same black abyss which has just swallowed up the birds; but it is 
years now since I spent a night in a lighthouse, and the sensation 
of fancying oneself pitching backwards through the glass into the 
darkness requires some imagination to recall it. 
Often have I wished that it were possible for a thoroughly practical 
ornithologist to be placed, for three months in the autumn, in each 
lighthouse and lightship; his work to consist of filling up, in a 
tabulated form, a record of birds striking the glass at night; the 
number of each species, sex and age, direction of flight, hour, state 
of weather and wind. These tables, taken collectively, would be 
deeply interesting, and perhaps throw light on some of the yet 
little-understood problems of migration. 
