178 Summer Studies of Birds and Books chap. 



" The cunning fowlers for you set 

 Snare and springe, twig, trap, and net, 

 Catcli and sell you by the score ; 

 Buyers feel and pinch you sore." 1 



Aristotle, then, had plenty of opportunity of 

 procuring specimens of birds, either alive or dead, 

 during his long stay at Athens, and also of getting 

 information about them from the fowlers who 

 brought them to market. In his description of the 

 habits of the Partridge, for example, not only does 

 he quote the bird-catchers, but it is plain from the 

 account itself that no one but a professional could 

 have supplied him with the information.^ 



What, in the next place, does Aristotle tell us of 

 the habits of birds in general ? What, for example, 

 does he tell us about migration, the greatest of 

 ornithological problems ? Let me remind you that 

 even Gilbert White only a century ago could not quite 

 persuade himself that some birds do not stay and 

 " lie low " in the winter. Writing in 1793, he has, he 

 says, " great reason to suppose that the Sand-martins 

 do not leave their wild haunts at all, but are secreted 

 amidst the clefts and caverns of those abrupt cliffs 

 where they usually spend their summers." N'ow 

 here is a note of Aristotle's on migration, which will 



' Aristoph. Avcs, 526 foil. 



^ Hist. Anim. ix. 8. The references are to Bekker's edition of 

 1837. 



