With a few exceptions these seemed to be young birds, rather storm-buffeted and weary. Whether they lighted on the ship as a convenient resting-place in the regular course of their migration, or whether they had been blown off to sea by the strong westerly wind, it is impossible to say. I think the former. The wind was blustering but by no means a gale, and they could easily fly against it. They seemed most numerous at daybreak, and I think they were attracted by the ship’s lights during the night, and stopped on it to feed and rest at morning, as they do on land. Possibly, also, the younger generation of birds is finding that it is a good deal easier to go South by steam power than it is to get there by main strength. Why not? In a century or so chimney swallows have learned to build in chimneys rather than in caves and hollow trees. Bluebirds, martins and white-bellied swallows have learned the uses of bird boxes. Why shouldn’t they adopt steamships? The wireless operator who pulls all sorts of information out of the circumambient atmosphere tells me that they have; that at this season of the year the ships are apt to swarm with tiny songsters, and the young lady from up the State who sits at the piano in the social hall and coquettishly sings about “the saucy little bird on Nellie’s hat,” is now able to do it with illustrations. This lighting of the myrtle warbler on the passenger’s hat is not persiflage, either. Several times it happened. Along in the afternoon a negro, sitting in a sunny corner of the steerage deck, held nevertheless the very center of the stage for several minutes with a junco perched on the crown of a well-brushed black soft hat that might have been as old as he was. It made a rather pretty picture and the old man’s eyes shone with delight long after the junco had flown. “Ya-as,” he drawled to his companions after the bird had gone, “dem birds, dey al’ays does laike dat hat. One day down in Souf Ca’lina ah was sitting in de field a long time an’ one of dem cuckoo birds des came along and laid an aig in dat hat. Yessir, it done did.” This may be true. I tell it as I heard it.