RIVER valleys, coast lines, and mountain chains are the ways followed by the migrating birds; and frequent observations have determined the fact that birds travel at great heights, many as much as a mile from the earth. This may be one of the reasons why the tiny creatures have such keen sight; for from this distance they can obtain a far-reaching view of the surrounding country and distinguish landmarks readily.

If the weather is stormy or foggy, then the birds are obliged to fly much lower; and, too, it is then that the lights along the coast attract them and such countless numbers perish by being beaten against the lighthouses, many more birds being killed in the fall season of migration than in the spring, when the weather is less stormy.

They fly in vast numbers, and often on still nights they can be heard calling to each other. A good idea of their number can be obtained by the use of a telescope, which, if focused on the moon, will often show the birds on a brilliant background so that they can readily be discerned. The motion of their wings can easily be seen in this way, and the immense numbers of them better realized.

A good way to form an idea of the distance covered each year by the birds as they migrate is to take a single bird and note its journey. The bobolink makes his winter start in August, rests awhile in the marshlands and then visits the rice belt of the Southern states, doing damage directly and indirectly each year to an amount covering several millions of dollars. Then he flies over Cuba, and there his name is chambergo. Next he lingers along the coast of Yucatan, then goes on south through Central America and the island of Jamaica, in which place they call him "butter-bird," on account of his great plumpness, the result of the rice-feeding, no doubt; and from this place he makes one continuous long journey for over four hundred miles to Brazil, where he spends the winter. Here he stays until early spring, and then, if no accident has come to him, he will again brighten our months of blossoms by his chipper presence and his delightful song.

One of the most curious things observed in the fall migration of birds is in this same bobolink. By some manner of means many of these birds have gone west, some as far as Utah, to spend their summers, and when the winter is coming they, too, take their flight south, but not by the direct way through Mexico, and then to Central America, as would seem most natural, but following their hereditary instincts they come back to the Atlantic coast and journey down it, along the whole way to Florida, then across to Cuba, and on with those from New Jersey and New England until the winter resting-place is reached. This bird gives a most conclusive and interesting illustration of the permanency of bird routes and the "hereditary habit" of the winged flocks.—Bangor Commercial.