Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1887 — The Migration of Birds. [ARTICLE]

The Migration of Birds.

The flight of itorkshM given trouble to the Germans and the Chinese, while the disappearance and reappearance of the swallows have caused untold trouble everywhere, aays the Popular Science Monthly. Learned bodies, like the French Academy and the Royal Society of London, have gravely asserted that, in the fall, swallows plunge into the mud of marshes and mill* ponds, become torpid, and hibernate like frogs and snakes. I have seen a list of nearly two hundred articles written all along from the middle of the . seventeenth centnry down to 1877, for the purpQse of proving or disproving the hibernation of swallows and other birds 1 And Dr. Cones says he can lay his hands upon papers of that period which discuss the migration of swallows to the moon, the falling of the little quadrupeds called lemmings in showers from the clouds, and the origin of brant-geese from barnacles that grew on trees. Indeed, not a year ago I was assured by a gentleman of more than average intelligence that this lastis undoubtedly the correct theory as to the origin of the barnacle goose. And it was not a decade ago that I read, in one of the leading newspapers of this State, an article of ns < ur.ous character. Its purpose was to explain the sudden appearance in the fall of the black snowbirds and their as sudden disappearance in spring, and the explanation given was that our common sparrows change color in fall, becoming snowbirds, which they remain until spring, when they put on their other dress and become sparrows again. And I find that among the common people of the country there are many who have this belief. We have long known in a general way that the birds go southward to winter, and return to spend the summer at the north. But just where in the south do they go? Why do they go there? By what routes do they travel? At what rate of speed? Do they travel by night or by day, or both? What species migrate first, which last, and why? How are they guided in their course? What is the winter as well as the summer habitat of each particular species, when does it get there, and when does it leave the one for the other? In'what way and to what extent are their movements dependent upon or influenced by vegetable and meteorological phenomena?