INTRODUCTION. 27 
dead birds, representing twenty-six different species. After consuming 
all the time I could spare in this work, I walked over two miles or so of beach, 
where the birds were more common than on the shore where the count was 
taken; this brought me within half a mile of the mouth of the Sable river and I 
then crossed it and turned my steps inland to a railway station. * * * 
After my return I wrote to various persons near the lake shore. * * * 
It appears that from below Grand Bend the birds were very numerous until 
beyond Stony Point, but toward Kettle Point they diminished and were not 
plentiful again until Blue Point, beyond which they were ‘laying six deep 
in one place. * * * The northeastern section, of which I covered 
perhaps two miles, would have approximately one thousand birds to the mile, 
and the whole section might be perhaps ten miles; the western section was 
probably thickly covered, but the length is unknown, possibly three miles, 
or perhaps even ten.” 
The weather conditions which resulted in this tragedy are thus described 
by Mr. Saunders: “The early days of October, 1906, were warm and damp, 
but on the sixth came a north wind which carried the night temperature 
down to nearly freezing. Near there it stayed with little variation until 
the tenth, and on the tenth the north wind brought snow through the western 
part of Ontario. At London there was only two or three inches, which 
vanished early next day; and the thermometer fell to only 32 degrees on the 
night of the 10th, and to 28 on the 11th, but ten miles west there was five 
inches of snow at 5 p. m. October 10, and towards Lake Huron, at the south- 
east corner, between Goderich and Sarnia, the snow attained a depth of nearly 
a foot and a half, and the temperature dropped considerably lower than at 
London. On that night, apparently, there must have been a heavy migration 
of birds across Lake Huron, and the cold and snow combined overcame many 
of them, so that they fell in the lake and were drowned.” 
It should be noted that in all probability the destruction of these birds 
took place on the night of October 10-11, and that this is an exceptionally 
early date for severe cold and heavy snow. Among the birds overtaken 
by this disaster, the species most strongly represented appear to have been 
the Winter Wren, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Tree Sparrow, 
Junco, and Golden-crested Kinglet. Mr. Saunders counted 417 Juncos in 
the total of 1,845 birds alluded to. 
We have no time to discuss the alleged power of birds to divine coming 
storms, nor can we enter into a consideration of such instincts as should 
save them from disasters like those just described. I have tried to show 
already that they possess no such extraordinary powers of flight as are 
ascribed to them by popular writers, and had we the time, it might be shown, 
I believe, that at least for a very large part of their migratory flight they 
do not follow fixed paths, nor do they retrace their footsteps—or better, 
wing-beats—through memory. That certain great natural highways exist, 
I have no doubt, but certainly part of the throngs of birds which use them 
do so not because they have ever used them before, or even because their 
ancestors used them, but because the same forces which led to their use 
then are still operative and because these routes are the easiest and best 
paths to the regions desired. : 
Natural highways, recognized as such by all well informed bird-students, 
are the valleys of rivers having a general north and south trend, especially 
the larger rivers. Famous examples of such highways are seen in the 
Mississippi and the Red River of the north which combine to form a path 
along which millions of birds pass annually between Louisiana and Manitoba, 
