Ueber die Zugstrassen der Vögel

Abstract

GRANTING it to be true that truth never dies, it is undeniable that error is hard to kill. A notable instance of this last assertion is furnished by the infatuation which possesses so many people, otherwise, perhaps, not unreasoning, to believe that more or fewer of the birds which commonly frequent these islands in summer, pass the winter in a torpid state—“hibernate,” as they are pleased to say. Vainly have travellers or residents on the shores of the Mediterranean, or in the interior of Africa, told us over and over again, how that as the hot weather comes to an end with us, our cuckoos, our swifts, our swallows—nay, almost all our summer birds—come crowding southwards. As vainly have the same observers recorded the northward journeys of the same species, though under somewhat different conditions, on the approach of our spring. Of course, no one who merits the title of an ornithologist disregards the plain evidence thus afforded, or entertains a single doubt as to what it proves—however strongly he may recognise the fact that we know little of the paths taken by the migrants, and next to nothing of the faculty whereby they ordinarily reach their ancestral summer-home. But there are not a few persons enjoying among the vulgar of all classes the reputation of being ornithological authorities, and there are thousands of the general public, who still hanker after the ancient faith in “hibernation.” It may be said that it is but lost labour to attempt to bring such people to reason, and so, possibly, it is. Still, the apparent gravity with which this absurd notion is from time to time propounded, renders it necessary that its folly should be as often exposed, lest the pertinacity with which it is urged gain for it adherents among those who think that, as they encounter no refutation of it, it may or must be true, and the testimony in its support unanswerable. As a rule, there seems to be an outbreak of the “hibernation” mania every two years or so. It nearly always presents the same essential features. Some one, who with the multitude passes for an ornithologist, sends to a newspaper a second or third-hand story of some nameless person who in some nameless place found a number of torpid swallows in the chink of a chalk-pit, or a drowsy landrail in a haystack—or, on a log of wood being laid on the fire, of a cuckoo that woke from its slumber and, emerging from its retreat, sat on the hob, regardless of its singed plumage and cheerfully singing its accustomed song. Occasionally a brilliant imagination, and the desire of supplying some grateful novelty suggests a diversion of the details, and the swallows are dragged from a horse-pond in a casting-net, or have got themselves into an eelpot—or the cuckoo is discovered as the billets are being split. The story, which can be fairly compared with the tales of witches' imps, and of our dear old friend the antediluvian toad-in-a-hole, is repeated in many newspapers, and countless correspondents write letters to their respective “organs,” citing parallel cases of which they have heard from their grandmothers, and wonder why “Professor” Darwin, Mr. Buckland, or the great “Doctor” Owen, do not favour the public with their views on the matter.

Ueber die Zugstrassen der Vögel.

Von J. A. Palmén, Docent der Zoologie an der Universität Helsingfors. Mit einer lithographirten Tafel. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1876.)