1 88 Field and Forest Rambles. 



have shot in autumn appeared inconveniently loaded with 

 fat, the average weight of several specimens being five ounces 

 and a half. But the bird is not by any means in such 

 good condition in spring. Mr. Boardman visited Florida 

 during several successive winters, where he found nearly 

 all the summer migrants of this region leading inactive 

 lives as compared with their habits in the north ; and all 

 the song-birds, and such as are usually vociferous, very 

 mute : precisely the same obtains with the water-birds, 

 especially of the Old World, as I have shown in my "Natural 

 History and Archaeology of the Nile Valley and Maltese 

 Islands/'* with reference to the goose, duck, and other winter 

 visitors to Egypt. Under such conditions, therefore, we should 

 expect them to push rapidly forward in spring to their 

 breeding grounds. The rule, as regards the water-fowl of the 

 New and Old World, applies more or less to the land birds 

 of the latter at both seasons ; inasmuch as the spring 

 quails on their way from Africa to Europe are particularly 

 fat and plump, and the same is the case with the smaller 

 warblers, including the garden warbler, which is the far- 

 famed beccafico of the Italians ; in fact, most grain and insect- 

 feeding birds keep in a good bodily state in either retreat, 

 and in the case of the warblers of Europe they apparently 

 fare better in their winter than summer quarters ; hence they 

 cannot in general have such severe struggles for existence 

 as many water-fowl dependent on certain conditions of the 

 surface for a proper supply of food. 



I was especially struck by the enormous flocks of Canada 

 and Brent geese that pass over New Brunswick, to and from 

 their breeding grounds, north of the 50 parallel of latitude.f 

 Of course their times of arrival and departure are subject to 

 some irregularities consequent on the degrees of mildness or 



* Pages 19 and 101. 



t Many of the gullies — to wit, Tracadie, on the north-east coast — abso- 

 lutely swarm with them in May and October during the migratory seasons . 



