Page:The Migration of Birds - Thomas A Coward - 1912.pdf/21

Rh "lumpers," will eventually solve many of the problems of to-day.

The ancients—a usefully ambiguous term—realised that birds migrated; our immediate forefathers of two or three centuries ago realised that certain birds vanished in winter and wondered how; and within modern times the phenomena of migration, the "mystery of mysteries," has been the subject of much study, speculation, and literary exposition. Indeed a full bibliography of migration would be a considerable volume. Even workers within the last few years have declared that certain phenomena were beyond human understanding, only to be explained by instinct, a word capable of most varied interpretation. In truth there is much to learn, much to which we must still answer—we do not know; but the speculative theory of yesterday is now either myth or fact, and the theory of to-day may be proved true and add something to the data of which knowledge is built, The wildest speculations, based on slender locally ascertained facts or on no foundation whatever except the fertility of the brain, have been offered as solutions of the mysteries; the literature of migration is a jumble of contradictions. John Legg, in 1780, said "In relating so many instances of unparalleled credulity, I confess I cannot suppress the irascible passion" (33), and Herr Otto Herman, only a