206 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
requiring the exercise of no intelligence or instinct: the so- 
called migratory impulse being a blind force, like other forces 
in Nature,—a mere material force impelling the bird forward 
without any act of will or instinct. To quote Mr. Rowley :— 
“ My idea about finding the way is this; the bird has as much 
to do with it as a man starting from London to York by the 
railway. He finds his way, steam conveys him; wind takes the 
bird. If the steam blows up, the passenger is killed; if the 
wind changes, the bird dies.” Again, “The bird starts on ils 
journey ; after it has set forth it is ruled entirely by circumstances 
of which wind is the chief . . . As a ship is ruled by the 
wind, so is the bird. The bird is a sailing ship, the tail is the 
rudder, and it is governed by the wind; and this is how it finds its 
way, just as seeds find their way,” é.e., seeds conveyed by ocean 
currents to distant shores, or from one field to another by the 
wind. 
From Mr. Rowley’s theory I am obliged entirely to dissent; 
for I am satisfied that birds are not guided by the wind. The 
migratory instinct, or by whatever name we choose to call it, is 
not a blind force; it is an actual and wonderful intelligence, an 
instinct hereditary in the bird itself; an instinct called into play 
by various causes, food, vicissitudes of climate, sexual love; an 
instinct which has been in force, handed down through countless 
generations of birds, slowly modified from time to time by such 
circumstances as a gradual change of climate, or changes in the 
distribution of land and water,* but still an instinct mighty and 
all-sufficient for attaining its special object. 
Birds are not mere automata, they are something more than 
this; we are much too apt to consider them from our-own peculiar 
standpoint; we argue about them, their habits and movements, as 
we do also about other animals, from our own experience. What 
* Before the enclosure and drainage of the Lincolnshire Fens enormous flocks of 
various wild-fowl visited the east coast every autumn in incredible numbers. At 
these times we are told a flock of wild ducks was observed passing along from 
the N. and N.E, into the East Fen in a continuous stream for eight hours together. 
Since the drainage and reclamation of the Fen lands the wild fowl have practically 
deserted our coast, the great migratory stream now passing down the opposite 
coast of Holland, our principal supply of wild fowl coming from that country. In 
the shallow waters of the Zuyder Zee, during the autumn migration, the sea is 
sometimes black for many miles with various ducks. Last year, during the first 
week of November, immense flocks of swan, geese, and ducks passed Heligoland, 
« 
