94 
DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS. 
tected by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other 
special circumstances, tliey yield very readily to the hostile 
influences of civilization, and, though the first operations of the 
settler are favorable to the increase of many species, the great 
extension of rural and of mechanical industry is, in a variety 
of ways, destructive even to tribes not directly warred upon 
by man.* 
* Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 409, observes : “Of birds it is estimated 
that tbe number of those which die every year equals the aggregate num¬ 
ber by which the species to which they respectively belong is, on the 
average, permanently represented.” 
A remarkable instance of the influence of new circumstances upon birds 
was observed upon the establishment of a lighthouse on Cape Cod some 
years since. The morning after the lamps were lighted for the first time, 
more than a hundred dead birds of several different species, chiefly water 
fowl, were found at the foot of the tower. They had been killed in the 
course of the night by flying against the thick glass or grating of the 
lantern. 
Migrating birds, whether for greater security from eagles, hawks, and 
other enemies, or for some unknown reason, perform a great part of their 
annual journeys by night; and it is observed in the Alps that they follow 
the high roads in their passage across the mountains. This is partly 
because the food in search of which they must sometimes descend is prin¬ 
cipally found near the roads, it is, however, not altogether for the sake 
of consorting with man, or of profiting by his labors, that their line of flight 
conforms to the paths he has traced, but rather because the great roads are 
carried through the natural depressions in the chain, and hence the birds 
can cross the summit by these routes without rising to a height where at 
the seasons of migration the cold would be excessive. 
The instinct which guides migratory birds in their course is not in all 
cases infallible, and it seems to be confounded by changes in the condition 
of the surface. I am familiar with a village in Mew England, at the junc¬ 
tion of two valleys, each drained by a mill stream, where the flocks of wild 
geese which formerly passed, every spring and autumn, were very frequently 
lost, as it was popularly phrased, and I have often heard their screams in 
the night as they flew wildly about in perplexity as to the proper course. 
Perhaps the village lights embarrassed them, or perhaps the constant 
changes in the face of the country, from the clearings then going on, 
introduced into the landscape features not according with tho ideal map 
handed down in the anserine family, and thus deranged its traditional 
geography. 
