PREHISTORIC BIRDS 11 
saw must have come from some distant land, because 
they appeared suddenly. Some translators think he meant 
Vultures, but nearly all birds of prey are migratory, so that 
is immaterial. 
The Swallow was pretty sure to appeal to the poets, and 
in the fifth century B.c. Anacreon was ready enough to welcome 
the return of this harbinger of spring. In lines which have 
been rendered into English by Thomas Moore, he assigns 
Memphis on the shores of the Nile as its winter retreat. As 
might be expected, Herodotus, commonly called the “‘ Father 
of History ” (0. 484 B.c.), has something to say about migration 
which is also fairly definite. He tells us, as if it were an 
admitted fact, that Cranes, when they fly from the rigours of 
a Scythian winter, flock into Egypt to pass the cold season. 
By Scythia he meant the country to the north of the Black 
Sea; farther north than that was to him a terra incognita.* 
Aristotle a Great Naturalist.—But the first to discuss 
migration in anything like the spirit which moves a modern 
naturalist was the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.c.). He 
knew that there were many birds which migrated north 
in summer and south in winter, quitting countries which 
would have afforded them an insufficiency of food after 
the autumnal equinox. He also thought he knew that the 
Crane migrated from the steppes of Scythia to the marsh- 
lands south of Egypt, where the Nile has its source, 7.e., 
Central Africa. To the Pelican he gave a much shorter range, 
supposing that it merely shifted from the Strymon in 
Bulgaria to the Ister River, i.e., the Danube. Aristotle, 
although he may not have read Anacreon, was quite aware 
that the Swallow went somewhere, and admits that no one 
had seen a Turtle Dove in winter. He held that Pigcons and 
Turtle Doves flocked together and migrated, as did the Swan 
and the Wild Goose. As to Quails, if the wind was south, 
it went hard with them in his judgment, but if it were in the 
north they were bound to have a successful passage. His 
observations, which contain much truth, must have been 
partly made at Athens, and partly derived from travellers, 
but some refer to Pontus in Asia Minor. Aristotle considered 
* See Rennell’s ‘“‘ Geographical System of Herodotus’ p 50 et seq. 
