COUNTRY LIFE
MANY comparisons have been made of late between the islands of But and Madagascar, which has a much bigger area; but they have no, eluded one strange contrast. At this date, as throughout spring autumn, birds pass in immense flocks across the Channel and the No Sea. Britain and Heligoland are famous in biological annals for numbers of such migrants. Over the straits that divide Madagascar f Africa there is said to be next to no migration; and the reason is not width of the intervening waters but their depth. The North Sea shallow and the waters east of Madagascar very deep; and it is almost rule that birds migrate freely across shallow waters but not across de The theory is that where seas are shallow land once was seen, and birds obey an inherited habit. Man can always find some more or I plausible explanation for any strange events or fact and doubtless conjecture is sometimes justified; but the migration of birds and ind of butterflies and eels) is not one of the mysteries of which we have be given as yet even a tolerably specious explanation.
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