Introduction: Migration. 
51 
Two or three individuals often make their appearance in the daytime in the 
Bismarckplatz in the town each year, though they are not always driven there 
by cold and hunger, and they are most likely the same birds each season. 
There is an autumnal migration route of Wild Geese {Anser segetum) at Grossen- 
hain near Dresden, the birds making their appearance during their transit to the 
South every year on the fish-ponds at this place, but only quite exceptionally on 
the fish-ponds at Moritzburg some 10 miles to the S.E. Mr. Schwarze of the 
Dresden Museum informs us that Kingfishers did not occur in summer at his 
native village in Saxony , but were to be found every winter, when the fish- 
pond was frozen over, at the inlet or trap where water was let in, and where 
there were plenty of small fish. The Grey Crow, Corvus cornix L., visits the 
Eastern counties of England in great numbers every autumn; these birds do 
not proceed far inland, being unknown in the Western counties; and such is 
almost equally the case in the Southern Midlands, for instance, in Northern 
Buckinghamshire. Yet these parts of England appear to be quite as capable 
of sustaining them as the Eastern counties. Mr. W. Eagle Clarke’s “Digest 
of the Reports on Migration” should also be read in this connection. 
If the birds remember their final and intermediate halting-places so well, 
it appears that they must find their way in migrating by means of such familiar 
land-marks and stations. It is well known that “homing” Pigeons are lost if 
turned out in a strange country, and these birds are trained for long flights by 
breaking the journey into a number of stages and thus gradually lengthening 
the familiar landscape. In the same way it can well be understood how such 
a bird as Phylloscopus horealis^ which migrates from Norway across Siberia to 
the East Indies, may originally have been a native of East Siberia, but extended 
its breeding range for a mile or two at intervals , the advanced individuals 
flying back over the known track to their comrades in autumn; while the 
young generation gathered experience from the older travellers, and thus the 
ancient traditional route was increased in extent. 
Nevertheless it should be pointed out that Professor Newton, who was 
one of the first to examine the “homing” faculty of Pigeons in the hope that 
it might afford a clue to explaining how migrating birds find their way, has 
since been led to abandon it, holding that ocular memory as the guiding medium 
is disproved by three facts; first, that migrating birds fly over the open sea, 
sometimes thus traversing as much as a thousand miles before they can reach 
land; secondly, that much migration is done in darkness at night, sometimes at 
high elevations; thirdly, that “among migrants the young and old always journey 
apart and most generally by different routes”. These reasons may well be con- 
sidered beyond all objection by many ornithologists, but by others not so. A 
bird may take its direction across the vast open expanses of the Pacific, as has 
been already remarked, by means of the familiar lay of the land at starting, 
the rise and setting of sun and stars, and, as Prof. Mo bins has suggested, by 
the direction of the roll of the waves; also by ascending to a height of 10 000 
