Natural history -- Outdoor books; Nature; Nature study; Paris (France) -- Description and travel
Who can doubt that the wild fowl come south because the north is frozen
over? The Laplander and the reindeer migrate together; the Tartars
migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and
devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept
without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to
watch the common sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes
of song are heard on the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time
till the broods are reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he
migrates into the fields. By degrees he is joined by those left behind
to rear second broods, and at last the stubble is crowded with
sparrows, such flocks no one would believe possible unless they had
seen them. He has migrated for food, for his food changes with the
season, being mainly insects in spring, and grain and seeds in autumn.
Something may, I venture to think, in some cases of migration, be
fairly attributed to the influence of a desire for change, a desire
springing from physiological promptings for the preservation of health.
I am personally subject twice a year to the migratory impulse. I feel
it in spring and autumn, say about March, when the leaves begin to
appear, and again as the corn is carried, and most strongly as the
fields are left in stubble. I have felt it every year since boyhood,
often so powerfully as to be quite unable to resist it. Go I must, and
go I do, somewhere; if I do not I am soon unwell. The general idea of
direction is southerly, both spring and autumn; no doubt the reason is
because this is a northern country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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