The Minstrels of the Summer. 27 



and climate suit them. And what a blessing that our woods, 

 and flowery leas, and gardens, are deemed worthy of a long 

 stay, and of deep domestic joys by such happy, confident, and 

 silver-throated creatures. The puzzle to naturalists is that 

 they find their way over lakes, rivers, deserts, and seas, to the 

 very spots that best suits them. I know a still more curious 

 case, for when a boy I had given to me a pair of Guildhall 

 pigeons, which I kept in a large cage of laths until they reared 

 a pair of young ones. They then got out, owing to a rent in 

 the laths, and made their way back to Guildhall, where, one of 

 them having lost its tail, they were identified the same day by 

 the friend who had scandalized the civic authorities in catching 

 and sending them me. In this case the bump of locality must 

 have been larger than that of philo-progenitiveness, and as the 

 birds had never made that particular flight before, it was a 

 greater puzzle than the passage of birds from Africa to England, 

 or vice versa, because these go in flocks, and there must be in 

 every flock a certain number who have made the journey before, 

 and can pilot the way for all the fledglings. Nor is it such a 

 great undertaking, as it seems they rest on the rigging of 

 ships, on headlands, and in places of seclusion, when stress of 

 weather compels, and as the majority of migratory birds, 

 especially those that traverse the Mediterranean, are insect 

 eaters, they will probably find enough food to support them 

 while on the wing, both by sea and land. The narrative by 

 Mr. Thompson, in the Annals of Natural History for October, 

 1841, gives a list of twenty-seven birds which alighted or 

 hovered about her Majesty's ship Beacon, during a voyage up 

 the Mediterranean, in the month of April, and amongst them 

 were the swallow, martin, willow-wren, quail, hoopoe, oriole, 

 redstart, flycatcher, wheatear, and some of the minor raptores, 

 When we see a sheep leave a parched herbage to rejoice in 

 clover it does not surprise us, but we commend the creature 

 for its good taste ; the flight of a bird to a region adapted to its 

 habits, when its hitherto home has ceased to be attractive, is but a 

 similar process on a grander scale, and our wonder arises because 

 of the distance, and the apparent frailty of the creature attempt- 

 ing it. But the poetry of the fact is heightened by granting 

 reason and motive for the act, and wonder may stretch 

 more wide her wings, and take flight with them through the 

 mysterious darkness over pathless wilds, the more happy to be 

 associated with roving intelligences that move according to a 

 plan for mutual protection and guidance, than when resting in 

 the thought that they know not how to go or where to go, but 

 fly by blind destiny, the victims of erratic chance, like so many 

 whiffs of gossamer scattered about by the winds. To see 

 the swallows gathering at nightfall among the mists of autumn, 



