The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1881-01-15
The Migration Of Birds.

| Ing ml6fdGlOu VI O1IuSS
The London Standard 10 recent issue
says Familiar as this migration of birds
is to us, there is, perhaps, no question in
Zoology more obscure. The long flights
they take, and the unerring certainty with
which they wing their way between the
most distant places, arriving and departing
at the same period year after year, are
points in the history of rls If passage as
mysterious as they are INTEREST," &. We
know that most migrants hy after shutdown
though mauy Of them srlect a moonlight
! night to cross the Mediterranean. Blu,
that tn, r met, rolusical iusIiucI is not un-
errlng is proved by the fact that thousauds
are every year drowned in their flights
over the Atlantic and other oceans
| Northern Africa aud Western Asia ary
selected as winter quarters ny most ot tn, N,
aud they may BE- ,Iten noticed ON their way
hither to hang over towns at night, puzzled
in spite of their experience, by the shift
| ing lights of the streets aud hUuses. The
swallow or the nightingale may sometimes
be delayed by unexpected circumstances.
Yet it is rarely that they arrive or depart
many days sooner or later, one year with
| another.
Professor Newton considered that were
seafowls satellites revolving round the
earth their arrival could hardly be more
surely calculated by an astronomer. Foul
weather or fair, heat or cold, the pufins
repair to some of their stations punctually
on given day, as if their movements
were regulated by clock-work. The swift
ness of fight which characterizes most
birds enables them to cover a vast space in
a brief time. The common black swift can
fly 276 miles an hour, a speed which, if it
could be maintained for less than half day
would carry the bird from its winter to its
summer quarters. The large purple swift
of America is capable of even greater feats
on the wing. The chimney-swallow is
slower-90 miles per hour being about the
limits of its powers; but the passenger pig
con of the United States can accomplish a
Journey of 900 miles between sunrise and
sunset.
1t is also true, as the ingenious Herr
Palmen has attempted to show, that mi
grants, during their long flights may be di-
rected by an experience partly Inherited
and partly acquired by the individual bird.
They often follow the coast lines of conti-
nents, and invariably take, on their passage
over the Mediterranean, ,one of three routes.
But this theory will not explain how they
pilot themselves across broad oceans, and is
invalidated by the fact, familiar to every
ornithologist, that the old and young birds
do not journey in company. Invariably
the young broods travel together; then
come, after an interval, the parents; and
finally the rear is brought up by the weak
ly, infrm, molting and broken-winged.
This is the rule in autumn. The return
journey is accomplished in the reverse or
der. The distance travelled, seems more
over, to have no relation to the size of the
traveller.
The Swedish bluethroat performs its
maternal functions among the Laps, and
enjoys its winter holidays among the ne
groes of the Soudan, while the tiny ruby
throated humming bird proceeds annually
from Mexico to Newfoundland and back
again, though one would imagine that SO
delicate little fairy would be more at
home among the cacti and agaves of the
TERRA Caliente than among the frs and
fogs of the North.