392 
BIRD-LIFE. 
wishing to ascertain their sex plucked a few feathers from 
their breasts: as soon as, in one case, the new plumage 
appeared of a gray colour, denoting the female sex, he let 
her go, and hung the cage containing the other out of the 
window. The female was,, however, so accustomed to 
feed in the cage that she came to it, and, putting her 
head through the bars, fed with her brother. The cage 
was then removed to the window-ledge and the window 
opened: the female still followed, and by degrees got 
used to the room. In the autumn she took her departure 
with other Chaffinches; and next spring reappeared at 
the old spot, and fed with her brother as before. When 
breeding time came she built her nest in the neighbour¬ 
hood of the cage, and fed both herself and her young 
from the same. For four seasons she departed and 
returned again regularly, always behaving in the same 
manner; and it was only at the sixth spring that she was 
missing. 
Such examples prove that the same birds which leave 
us in autumn return in the spring, if alive, to their old 
haunts. How this occurs we cannot explain; we do not 
know how the bird finds its way back over such an 
immense distance : and this remains another riddle, the 
answer to which we are still awaiting. 
In Asia the different migrations take place, as with 
us, under circumstances essentially the same in most 
particulars, and the direction also is almost the same, 
were it not that birds do not fly quite so far to the 
southward as their European representatives : this is 
owing to the fact that Southern Asia offers a greater 
variety of localities suitable to serve as winter quarters 
than Africa does. South China, Upper and Lower 
India are the countries whither most of the native 
