CLIMATE AND CHANGES. 



Ixxxi 



introduce the suggestion that if fishes are influenced directly by 

 that class of phenomena, then other migrants, such as hirds, may 

 likewise be influenced — and probably are — by various phenomena 

 connected with aerial and meteorological variations. I desire to 

 point a way along which some future investigation may be directed 

 as relating to the mysteries of bird-migration. Because it appears to 

 me that many years' investigation at lighthouses and land-stations, 

 and inland records, have not yet added greatly to our true fixed 

 knowledge of bird-migration. A much more elaborate and per- 

 fected system of meteorological research, not merely confined to high 

 and low level stations, or to " wet and dry bulbology," within the 

 limited area of Great Britain, but extended over the whole east and 

 west and north and south, land and sea communications, of the Old 

 and New Worlds, with their outlying Arctic and Polar islands and 

 continents, must he undertaken — if at all — internationally, and upon 

 a uniform and scientific basis. Not merely will it in future be 

 sufficient to continue the ordinary observations of our present-day 

 great meteorological societies, but the very A B C of the observa- 

 tion of natural phenomena must be more systematically and care- 

 fully recorded. Indeed, the truly scientific examples set to us by 

 such " old-world " authorities as White of Selborne, and others of 

 much more ancient date than he, ought to be no longer neglected. 



I may add that I have not studied an article by Professor Otto 

 Petterson of Bremen, though my attention had been drawn to it by 

 Professor D Arcy Thompson in connection with some questions I asked 

 him regarding the soundings in the North Sea and the movements of 

 herring, which he refers to in the Blue Book. 



It is pitiable to read in a newspaper report that in A.D. 1906 

 (June 27, 1906) a proposal is made in Parliament to discontinue 

 British participation in further investigation of the International 

 Committee. 



Professor D'Arcy Thompson writes to me (26th Jan. 1905): — 



" Now, whatever be the cause, whether it be local winds, or more probably 

 some far-oflf pulsation, there is no doubt that we have in the North Sea a 

 periodic ebb and flow of the Atlantic or Gulf Stream water, the ebb being 

 in autumn. But the trouble is that there are many races of herring (as 

 Heincke has so well shown, and several of which are pretty familiar to us) ; 

 and while it is still very probable that hydrographical conditions are the 

 clue to their wandering, yet these hydrographical conditions probably differ 



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