350 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



perhaps considering that their little passengers can 

 easily find their way down to the earth. 



In some instances, however, the small birds have 

 been seen to come off the backs of the larger ones 

 just as the latter were about to alight. An 

 American visitor to the Island of Crete in the 

 autumn of 1878, as related by Professor Claypole, of 

 Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio/ satisfied 

 himself that Wagtails and other small birds cross 

 over from Europe on their southward migration on 

 the backs of Cranes ; and although, on first hearing 

 the statement made, he was extremely incredu- 

 lous, he afterwards, on one occasion, had ocular 

 demonstration of the fact. A fisherman in his 

 presence discharging his flint-lock at a flock of 

 passing Cranes, he saw three small birds rise up 

 from among them and disappear. 



A German author, Adolf Ebeling, writing in 

 the Gartenlaube, asserts that he found it currently 

 believed at Cairo that Wagtails and other small 

 birds cross from Europe to Nubia and Abyssinia on 

 the backs of Storks and Cranes, and details the 

 result of conversations which he had with several 

 independent witnesses, all testifying to the same 

 thing. He then proceeds: "At supper, in the 

 Hotel du Nil, I related the curious story to all 

 present, but, naturally enough, found only 

 unbelieving ears. The only one who did not laugh 

 was the Privy Councillor von Heuglin, the famous 

 African traveller, and, excepting Brehm, the most 

 celebrated authority of our time on the birds of 

 '^Nature, February 24, 1881. 



