Report on the Migration of Birds in the Spring and Autumn of 1883. Fifth Report

Mr. J. A. HARVIE BROWN, Mr. J. CORDEAUX, Mr. R. M. BARRINGTON, and Mr. A. G. MORE.
FIFTH REPORT.
A good practical naturalist must be a good observer; and how many qualities are required to make up a good observer! Attention, patience, quickness to seize separate facts, discrimination to keep them unconfused, readiness to combine them, and rapidity and yet slowness of induction; above all, perfect fidelity, which can be seduced neither by the enticements of a favourite theory nor by the temptation to see a little more than actually happens in some passing drama. — Essays, Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. I.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WEST, NEWMAN & CO., 54, HATTON GARDEN. 1884.
The following Report contains a summary of investigations of the Committee re-appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Southport, in 1883, to consist of Professor Newton, Mr. J. A. Harvie Brown, Mr. John Cordeaux, Mr. W. Eagle Clarke, Mr. R. M. Barrington, and Mr. A. G. More, for the purpose of obtaining (with the consent of the Master and Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, the Commissioners of Northern Lights, and the Commissioners of Irish Lights) observations on the Migration of Birds at Lighthouses and Lightships, and of reporting on the same at Montreal, Canada, in 1884. Mr. Cordeaux to be the Secretary.
The returns relating to Scotland have been arranged by Mr. J. A. Harvie Brown; for the East Coast of England, by Mr. Cordeaux; and those for the Coasts of Ireland, by Mr. R. M. Barrington and Mr. A. G. More. No return has been received by the Committee from the West Coast of England and the Isle of Man.
FIFTH REPORT
THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS
IN THE
SPRING AND AUTUMN OF 1883.
We had a succession of black nights going up the river, and it was observable that whenever we landed and suddenly inundated the trees with the intense sun-burst of the Electric Light, a certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and often a song bird turned up and fell to singing. We judged that they mistook this superb artificial day for the genuine article. —Mark Twain, in ' Life on the Mississippi ,' p. 452.