May, 1919] 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist 



37 



as far north as Hamilton Inlet, I observed that the 

 Newfoundland cod fishermen were in the habit 

 of raiding all the islands and adjacent mainlands on 

 Sunday and making way with the eggs and the 

 young of all the sea-birds. Some of the islands were 

 wholly deserted so far as bird life was concerned 

 and your Captain Joncas told me that in addition 

 to the Newfoundland fishermen a number of men 

 were engaged in the business of egging and that 

 the eggs were preserved in brine and sold to the 

 crews of various vessels. He said that the egg hunt 

 was continued until such a late date in the season 

 that the young birds which finally hatched were not 

 strong enough to withstand the autumn storms and 

 he had seen thousands of young birds thrown up on 

 the beaches. When I have been on the coast the 

 Newfoundland fishermen destroyed young birds for 



sport, leaving them where they fell on the ground 

 if they were of species not good to eat. 



The waste of food fish also is very great along 

 the Labrador coast. Small cod and hake which 

 are not desired by the fishermen are often smothered 

 in the traps or killed when the traps are emptied 

 and I have seen them floating for miles on the sur- 

 face when the trappers were at work. The cod 

 trappers catch a great many adult salmon by 

 setting their nets in the channels when the salmon 

 first make their way towards the rivers. This is 

 illegal, but is winked at by the officials. A remark- 

 able waste of salmon occurs in September when the 

 herring nets are used near the coast. This is the 

 time of year when the smelts are descending from 

 the rivers and putting out to sea. They are captured 

 in quantities in the herring nets. 



Robert T. Morris. 



BIRD MIGRATION. 



By H. Mousley, Hatley, Que. 



It is rightly said no doubt that "old traditions 

 die hard," and therefore it is not so very surprising 

 perhaps to find in Mr. C. B. Hutching's short note 

 on the above subject in the November number of 

 The Ottawa Naturalist, page 97, that a writer 

 in the St. Louis Republic, whilst considering the idea 

 of birds flying in the rarified atmosphere three miles 

 above the earth's surface, and being guided by the 

 topography of the country at night, when flights are 

 mostly made, as being somewhat erroneous, pro- 

 pounds a solution equally erroneous to my mind, 

 when he suggests that they guide their course by 

 means of the stars. 



Speaking personally I have long ago given up 

 cherishing "The fairy tales of science, and the long 

 result of Time;" which to put it in a nutshell, 

 amounts to considering birds as self-conscious an- 

 imals like ourselves, instead of sub-conscious ones, 

 governed by some impulse imperfectly known at 

 present. 



To imagine that birds are capable of shaping their 

 course by means of such landmarks as mountains, 

 rivers or even stars, seems to me to be somewhat 

 far fetched, especially when we consider that a large 

 proportion of them migrate at night, and sometimes 

 on the very darkest nights too, when all of these 

 landmarks, including the stars, would be invisible. 

 No, there must be some other explanation to account 

 for this unerring intuition (or call it what you like) 

 in the animal world, and that explanation lies in 

 the fact, I think, that in pure nature there is no such 

 thing as self-consciousness, or the power of reason- 



ing, although some of the higher animals, such as 

 dogs, horses, etc., from long and intimate association 

 with man, no doubt at times display traces of it, in 

 the same way that some human beings are still ab- 

 normally susceptible to subconscious impressions, a 

 relic of conditions existing before the evolution of 

 self-conscious mind. 



All wild birds and animals however I believe are 

 subconscious, and therein lies the secret of their 

 making no mistakes, for they do not reason as human 

 beings do, but know just what ought to be done, 

 and when and how to do it, in the same way as the 

 larva knows exactly when it is full fed and must 

 pupate, as well as where and when and how that 

 process is to be accomplished, and the birds the 

 time of migration, the nesting period, the rearing of 

 their young, and the time to return to their winter 

 quarters, without the aid of any landmarks whatso- 

 ever in either case. To understand this more fully 

 one must be prepared to accept the fact that telepathy 

 (now recognized by science, but which up to the 

 present we have been unable to turn to practical 

 account by mechanical means as in the case of the 

 Marconi wireless system) pervades and is general 

 throughout the entire minimal kingdom. It is a 

 potential faculty (working on an astral plane un- 

 known to us at present) which inter-connects sub- 

 conscious mind, and permits silent intercourse to be- 

 come established. But just as in the case of electric- 

 ity and wireless telegraphy, electric force must pass 

 in the one case along a wire connector, in the other 

 through a psycho physical medium (ether) before it 



