Page:The Migration of Birds - Thomas A Coward - 1912.pdf/22

6 few years ago, pointing out the ingenious dogmas "void of every firm foundation," says that "really it is a field in which every thinking ornithologist may create new theses to any extent and more or less incredible" (31).

Herr Hernmian's system of "ornithophænology," the accumulation of substantiated observations and facts, will not prove everything, but his work in Hungary, that of Dr Merriam and Mr Cooke in America, and of Mr W. Eagle Clarke in Britain, each aided by a numerous band of careful workers, are striking examples of what can be accomplished. Whatever errors future enlightenment may show in their conclusions their ascertained facts will remain positive knowledge; theirs is not what Herr Herman himself described as "pretended authority."

In order to grasp the problems of migration it is necessary to get rid of the puerile and insular aspect of the subject, namely that migrants are merely those birds which come to us, like the swallow and cuckoo in the spring, and those, like the fieldfare and brambling, which visit us in winter but are not with us in summer. The complication of the subject may be demonstrated by a rough classification of the migrants to be observed in the British Islands.

Arbitrary grouping of the members of an avifauna