THE migration of birds, as Baily observes, is by no means the least interesting part of their history. I have noted for many years the migrations of the birds that make a longer or shorter stay with us, summer or winter, and have tabulated their arrivals and departures. And it has been to me a labor of love. Few things cast such attraction around the young and tender spring or over brown and matured autumn, as the coming and going of migratory birds. With delight we welcome the first notes of the purple martin, the bank or sand swallow, and the chimney swift, as they return to us in spring from the far sunny southland; and with feelings of wonder we witness the flight of the wild geese, as they pass over us high in air, or listen to the notes that tell us the whippoorwill and the chuckwills-widow are again the denizens of our groves. And, night after night as I listen to their weird song, feelings almost akin to superstition creep over me, till I can imagine their utterances to be the omen of good or ill to the hearer. There is no more mysterious bird in our land than the chuckwills-widow. Its migration so far northward as southeast Virginia has been doubted by some naturalists, but facts are against them.

And as I look abroad in autumn, and view the bevies of snowbirds that have just returned to us, and hear again the familiar "chip," "chip," as a passing vehicle puts them to sudden flight, how the finger of thought touches again on memory's bell, and I think of boyhood's happy hours, when I welcomed with delight the snowbirds back again to our lanes and fields.

Each feathered songster, as it revisits us from northland or southland, awakens feeling of profoundest interest, and if we have within us a single spark of that divine love of nature that dwells with the poet or the naturalist, we instinctively receive the birds back to their old haunts as we would welcome a long-absent friend. What boy of sensibility, having a spark of the nobler touch of manhood, could have it in his heart to harm the least of these sinless creatures that enliven our homes with their presence and song? Who can look without admiration upon them? Who could wish to destroy them? And when we reflect that the martins, willets, swifts and swallows that sport about our homes in summer, and the mocking bird that trills its polyglot song in our cedar groves by night, have returned to us from tropical or sub-tropical climes—that only a few weeks before they were flitting through the orange groves of Cuba, or building their nests amid the vine-latticed thickets of Florida, we cannot but admire and wonder at that "peculiar instinct," as Howitt calls it, that guides them with such unerring certainty through all the changes of their mysterious round.

For a period of twenty years the average time of the arrival of the purple martin has been about the last five days in March; and its departure for the South the second week in August. A few individuals may remain longer, but it is only when their breeding has been delayed. The earliest appearance of the martin that I have noted was the 8th of March, 1871, the latest the 26th of April, 1885. The last date was a cold and backward spring. This bird rears two broods of four or five each during the four months that it remains with us.

The chimney swift comes a week or ten days later than the martin, and seldom begins to build before the 10th of June. It raises one brood of four to six young, usually in some unused chimney. It remains with us longer than the martin, even until the cool nights of the last of September remind it that "the summer is over and gone." The flight of this bird is employed as a weather sign by country people. When it soars high, they say fair weather will continue, but when it flies low, then rain is near at hand.

The whippoorwill arrives, commonly, the last of March, but often not before the 10th or 15th of April. The chuckwills-widow comes three weeks later. Both of these strange birds rear one brood of two young. The nest is placed upon the bare ground, under a clump of low bushes, or a dense holly, or other low-growing tree. The eggs have the same markings as those of the bull bat, or night hawk, another very interesting migratory bird.

The catbird and the wood sparrows do not reach us till near the end of April, and often May is far advanced before these birds are noticed. The last is one of the sweetest songsters of our groves in summer, rivaling any bird of our clime. It seeks the coolest and darkest wood, where it pours forth its notes hour after hour, being one of the earliest to begin its mating lays.

The humming bird is the latest visitor to come to us in summer. This diminutive aerial voyager is one of the most charming of the migratory tribe, and worthy all the admiration that has been lavished upon it. It loves to sport in the flower gardens, where it sips the nectar from the honeycups of Flora's train. Only one species comes to us, the well-known ruby-throat.

But the young reader interested in these things should begin observation, and make a list for himself of all the migratory birds in his locality. A good form for such a record may be found in Howitt's "Book of the Seasons," an English work, but one from which a great deal about nature can be learned.

We will close our too brief sketch with the inquiry of Mrs. Kimball, of Connecticut: