50 
BY TEE WAYSIDE 
sunny south with all its luxuriance, and 
move, like a great army, out of South 
and Central America, out of the Carib¬ 
bean islands, out of Africa and out of 
India with its adjacent islands, toward 
frozen lands and frozen seas. With this 
grand movement toward the colder re¬ 
gions of the north, it is probable that, 
from the southern lands and southern 
seas of the other hemisphere, a similar 
though smaller, throng of birds is mov¬ 
ing toward the Equator to remain while 
winter is upon their summer homes. 
The robin, meadow larn, snow bunting 
and bluebird, purple finch, tree sparrow, 
butcher bird and pewee reach us in small 
numbers as early as the first week in 
April, and early in May the center of 
the great flood of birds is nearly over our 
latitude; its front somewhere in the 
British possessions, and its rear not far 
from the latitude of southern Illinois; its 
eastern flank is gleaning in the surf of 
the Atlantic, and its western skirmishing 
among the foot hills of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. Day by day this great army grows 
smaller as its members arrive at their 
old homes and settle down for the sum¬ 
mer; but do you realize what they are 
doing for the country as, day by day, 
they forage in field, meadow, orchard, 
garden, and forest ? Out from their 
winter abodes have come all manner of 
insects, and these are on the eve of de¬ 
positing eggs potent to fill the summer 
full to overflowing with crawling and 
buzzing life; but down upon them out 
of the still sky, for thirty or more consec¬ 
utive mornings, drop these hungry 
birds; and when I tell you that Professor 
S. A. Forbes found, by actual count, in 
each stomach of seven cedar birds living 
in an orchard infested with canker 
worms, from 70 to 101 of these cater¬ 
pillars, you may be able to realize, per¬ 
haps, what terrible enemies to insects 
birds must be; and especially if you bear 
in mind that, during the period of mi¬ 
gration, the number of birds per square 
mile of land must be, in our country, 
more than one hundred. 
The distances over which birds migrate 
vary between wide limits and are often 
surprisingly great, especially when we 
considered the small size of some of these: 
animated beings which transport them¬ 
selves twice each year across the interval 
between their homes. The bobolinks, 
which rear their young on the shores of 
Lake Winnipeg and then go with them 
to Cuba and Porto Rico to spend the 
winter, must twice each year traverse a 
distance exceeding 2,800 miles, or more 
than a tenth of the circumference of our 
earth. The kingbird breeds as far north 
as the 57th degree of latitude, and is 
found in the winter in South America. 
The biennial pilgramages of the little 
redstart exceed 3,000 miles, and those of 
the tiny humming bird, whose body 
would make a scant thimbleful of flesh 
all told, are scarcely less and certainly 
exceed 2,000 miles. 
But that beautiful little summer yel¬ 
low bird, which occasionally builds its 
nest under our chamber windows, sends 
some of its kin even to the white seafoam 
of the Arctic ocean, where they arrive 
the last of May, only ten or fifteen days 
after the sun has begun to ride contin¬ 
uously above the horizon, and yet these 
have come all the way from Gautemala 
over a distance of 3,800 miles, leaving 
members, even of their own species, to 
spend the summer among those tropical 
scenes. Wonderful mechanism that, 
which in a stomach no larger than a pea 
and an alimentary canal about six inches 
long, will manufacture from two or 
th ree slim caterpillars, a fly, a moth, or 
