SMALL BIRDS ON MIGRATION 351 



Africa." On asking his opinion, he remarked, 

 " Let others laugh, they know nothing about it. I 

 do not laugh, for the thing is well known to me. I 

 should have made mention of it in my work if I 

 had had any personal proof to justify it. I consider 

 the case probable, though I cannot give any 

 warrant for it." " My discovery, if I may so call it," 

 continues Herr Ebeling, " I would have kept to 

 myself, even after Heuglin had thus expressed 

 himself, had I not since discovered a new authority 

 for it. In the second edition of Dr Petermann's 

 great book of travels I find the following : Professor 

 Roth, of Munich, related to me, in Jerusalem, that 

 the well-known Swedish traveller, Hedenborg, 

 made an interesting observation on the island of 

 Rhodes, where he was staying. In the autumn, 

 when the Storks came in flocks over the sea to 

 Rhodes, he often heard the notes of small birds, 

 without being able to see them ; but on one occa- 

 sion he observed a party of Storks just as they 

 alighted, and saw several small birds come off their 

 backs, having been thus evidently transported by 

 them across the sea. 



In the face then of such testimony as that 

 above mentioned, and the admission of his belief 

 in the story by so experienced an ornithologist as 

 Heuglin, the conclusion seems inevitable that there 

 must be some truth in it, and it has received some 

 confirmation from a singular observation since made 

 in England. Mr T. H. Nelson, of Redcar, writing 

 in the Zoologist for February, 1882 (p. 73), reports 

 an occurrence related to him by an eye-witness, Mr 



