104 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



ignorance of the life of birds, which goes on in regions which 

 are almost inaccessible and unknown to us, there is no reason 

 to suppose their migrations are any more mysterious than most 

 biological problems ; for it is doubtful whether the modern man of 

 science is much more able than the simple-minded savage or the 

 poet and prophet to tell how all the coordinated faculties of a 

 predaceous animal are so thrown into action by the stimulus of 

 hunger as to lead to the pursuit and capture of prey; yet there 

 is no mystery in the physiology of hunger, for while there is 

 much we do not understand, we do know that hunger incites to 

 actions which are responsive, and adapted for satisfying hunger. 



So also we may make progress in our study of migration not- 

 withstanding ignorance of the nature of the impulse which excites 

 and regulates it. While I gratefully acknowledge my debt to 

 Newton for many of the facts in this chapter, I am not able to 

 agree with him that there is any peculiar mystery in the subject. 



While there is reason to believe almost every bird of temperate 

 and arctic climates is migratory to some degree, those which 

 simply range over a wider area at one season than at another 

 present nothing notable, and it is only in regions which are al- 

 most or quite abandoned by birds for part of the year that their 

 migrations attract the attention of students. As many birds which 

 are most valued as food are found in temperate regions for only 

 a short time in spring and fall, sportsmen and hunters and all 

 who pursue them for food have been familiar with the habits of 

 the birds of passage from the dawn of history ; but most of the 

 best literature on the subject is by northern ornithologists, and 

 the home of the writer has had and still has great influence upon 

 opinion as to the meaning and origin of the migratory habit. 



Scandinavians, and Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons are home-loving 

 folks who, in all their wanderings through this world of care, 

 keep a warm affection for the fatherland, and are much given to 

 the belief that their home is the choicest spot on earth. 



A learned professor in the University of Upsala once wrote a 

 book to prove that the Garden of Eden was in Sweden, by the 

 simple and obvious argument that no one who knows the delights 

 of life in that country can believe Paradise was anywhere else. 

 He showed that the Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyper- 



