Theories of Migration. 
173 
Among the ancients the migration of birds was made 
the subject of close observation. * Auguries 
were drawn from the flight of passage birds, 
and agricultural operations were to some extent regu¬ 
lated by the early or late appearance of the different 
species. But however accurate may have been the know¬ 
ledge which the priests and farmers of Rome possessed 
concerning the times and seasons of the arrival and 
departure of migrating birds, their conjectures, as well 
as those of our own early naturalists, as to the destination 
of the various kinds were somewhat eccentric. According 
to some writers, the “half-year birds, 5 ’ as Izaak Walton 
calls them, did not leave the country at all, but sought 
shelter from the winter’s cold in mudbanks and hollow 
trees. Of all the different theories suggested in explana¬ 
tion of the annual exodus of many species of birds, the 
very strangest is propounded in a paper preserved in the 
collection of curiosities, the Harleian Miscellany (vol. ii. 
p. 583), entitled “An enquiry into the physical and 
literal sense of that Scripture, 4 The stork in the heaven 
knoweth her appointed times ; and the turtle and the 
crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their 
coming.’ (Jeremiah viii. 7.)” The writer of this article 
vouchsafes to the public neither signature nor date. He 
argues that if the flight of storks had been in an hori¬ 
zontal direction flocks of migrating birds would have 
been frequently seen by travellers; he therefore assumes 
that their route must be perpendicular, and fixes upon 
the moon as their destination :— 
“ Therefore the stork, and the like may he said of other season- 
observing birds, till some place more fit can be assigned to them, does 
go unto, and remain in some one of the celestial bodies; and that 
must be the moon, which is most likely because nearest, and bearing 
most relation to this our earth, as appears in the Copernican scheme; 
yet is the distance great enough to denominate the passage thither an 
itineration or journey.” 
