INTRODUCTION. 
Ixi 
migrants, has veiled the subject in darkness instead of elucidating it, be- 
cause with respect to themselves, they are all uniformly whiter migrants. 
The common division is only correct, when it relates to the time of their 
return and departure to and from particular situations, but when applied to 
the birds themselves, it is unphilosophical and untrue. All birds belong to 
the country in which they are born ; and which they desert not from 
inclination, but necessity. They all, without exception, quit the colder 
regions for warmer climes, and at first proceed from north to south. Im- 
pelled by that universal principle which operates upon the wide extended 
circle of animated nature, the love of the place of their nativity, as they 
quit it from necessity, so they all return to it as soon as that cause ceases 
to affect them. Want of food in the cold season of winter drives them 
from their native shores. The love of the place of their birth, and the 
impulses of desire, stimulate them, on the opening of spring, to return.** 
Nature has placed inclination in the balance against compulsion ; and, by a 
principle powerful in operation, impelled the feathered wanderers to revisit 
their native shores. In Devon the Swallow commonly appears in the 
beginning of April ; a few show themselves before the tenth of that month, 
as the harbingers of spring; and these are generally found in our warm 
vallies, or near ponds and watery places, in search of food. There, at that 
season of the year, insects are most abundant. The multitude of Swallows 
increases daily, and, by the twenty-fifth, the major part of those that return 
to us has in general arrived. The accession of numbers to the colony 
Ekrnarck says, in his Migrationes Avium, “ Grallae tanquam conjuratae unanimiter 
in fugam se conjiciunt, ne earum unicam quidem inter nos habitantem invenire possimus.” It is 
evident that the Fieldfare and the Redwing breed in the north, and Linnaeus remarks of the 
former, ‘ Maximis in arboribus nidificat of the latter, “ in mediis arbusculis sive sepibus 
nidificat.” Scopoli, in his Annus Primus, in his account of the Woodcock, adds, Nidificat 
in paludibus Alpinis.” And M. Wallerius, in a letter to Mr. Pennant, says, “ Scolopaces 
rusticolae penes nos nidificant sed autumnali tempore ateun/, ac vernali redeunt.” This account 
refers to Sweden. In this Introduction will be given a list of birds of migration to and from 
Devon, and of their periods of disappearance and return. 
