Bird Legends. 



259 



the approach of the breeding season gives 

 rise to physiological restlessness and be- 

 cause they inherit an irresistible impulse to 

 move at this particular time of the year." 



There appears no ground whatever for 

 the theory that love of the nesting ground 

 is the foundation of the desire for migra 

 tion — migration originated from the nest- 

 ing ground, not to it — but there is no rea- 

 son to doubt that birds are subject to a 

 play of varied sentiments, and that along 

 with the recognized necessity of migration 

 on account of food supply and anticipated 

 climatic changes, there is a pleasurable ex- 

 citement such as we ourselves experience 

 from anticipated change of scene and cli- 

 mate, whether those anticipations are based 

 on old associations, as with the old birds, 

 or are aroused in young birds by actual 

 information, or by sympathy with the ex- 

 citement of their elders, and the mere re- 

 visiting the nesting ground has probably a 

 share in the pleasurable excitement aroused; 

 but when Dr. Cooke theorizes about "in- 

 herited memory" we must confess ourselves 

 at a loss to understand him. When he 

 says that the memory which enables migrat- 

 ing birds to find their way to and from 

 their summer feeding grounds "is not the 



memory of the individual, but the memory 

 inherited from numberless preceding gen- 

 erations which have passed and repassed 

 over the same road," he entrenches himself 

 in depths in which we cannot venture to 

 follow him. The faculty of memory is in- 

 herited, and may be strengthened from 

 generation to generation by exercise, but 

 the incidents or experiences of the birds of 

 one age cannot be remembered by their 

 descendants, by an effort of their own mem- 

 ory. At least there is nothing in human 

 experience to warrant such a belief. 



In fact, although some acts of both man 

 and the lower animals must be character- 

 ized as instinctive, the old creed that the 

 lower animals perform all their actions in- 

 stinctively is steadily being replaced by the 

 view that the lives of the lower animals are 

 regulated by mental processes akin to our; 

 and that although their reflective powers 

 may be vastly more contracted, their facul- 

 ties of observation are so immeasurably 

 superior, that it appears safer to conclude 

 that their mental faculties are equal to the 

 apprehension of the conditions necessary 

 to self-preservation, than to attribute their 

 actions to so obscure and little understood 

 a force as instinct. 



BIRD LEGENDS. 



AMONGST birds of good omen, the 

 swallow occupies the most promi- 

 nent position, and fully shares the popular- 

 ity of the stork. In Swabia, swallows are 

 called " God's birds," and in Silesia, " Our 

 Lady's birds," because at break of day they 

 twitter a song in her praise; while in the 

 Ober Inn Valley, in the Tyrol, it is said 

 that the swallows assisted the Almighty to 

 construct heaven. At Maran they time 

 their arrival and departure by the festivals 

 of the Blessed Virgin. They appear at the 



Feast of the Annunciation, and on the 

 Eighth of September: 



" At Mary's birth, 

 The swallows fly off. " 



There is a general belief throughout 

 Germany, that the house where they built 

 their nests is blessed and protected from 

 all evil. In the Ober Inn Valley people 

 say there is no strife where swallows build, 

 and in the Oetz Valley their presence 

 makes a village wealthy, and prosperity 

 departs with them. It is customary in 



