ANIMALS ON THE MARCH.
SIR JOHN OGLANDER, writing of the manners and customs of the Isle of Wight in the days of Charles I., quaintly remarks that persons out of " owre island" who undertook a journey to London always made their wills first, -" as reckoning noe trooble like to travel." Many people still take the same view as was then held by the islanders. But the trouble of a separate journey is nothing as compared with the march of organised bodies who have to provide their own commissariat and transport. That is where Western nations usually break down, though in the East the business is better understood. Xerxes could never have marched and fed his million men through Thrace to Greece if half of them had not belonged to the " caravanning " races. Animals on the march manage these things better. Generally speaking, they go worst if driven, better if ridden, when man becomes a part of the animal, and beat when left to themselves. Compare, for instance, sheep driven along a road with the game animals changing pastures voluntarily on the hill, or horses in a drove with others ridden in a march of cavalry, or a troop of colts galloping in the breeder's paddock. The marches of the larger quadrupeds have many features in common. Long journeys in great numbers are, or were, undertaken by the spring-buck, the American bison, the musk-ox, and in smaller bodies by wild horses, and the antelopes of the Steppes. All these, with the exception of the musk-ox in some of the mountains of Alaska, make their journeys over plains, the spring-bucks over the "veldt," the bison on the prairie, the musk-oxen on the " barren lands," the horses on the pampas, the antelopes on an absolutely fiat steppe. They are therefore free to choose their own order, and like the migrating hosts of Tartars, nearly always move on a wide front. In this order they avoid the constant strain on the rear ranks of closing up in a hurry, which is one of the standing difficulties of cavalry marching along roads. The German cavalry under Von Radowitz tried the
experiment of marching for a whole day in extended line. Owing to the difficulty caused by obstacles, the experi- ment was abandoned, though the French cavalry in their manceuvres still practise this, to them, most difficult form of advance. For animals it has another advantage. When halting to feed they can browse straight forward in line, on grass untrodden by animals in front.
The march of the spring-bucks shows far the largest bodies of large mammals to be seen in movement at the present date. This, however, is not an orderly progress. The herds are under no control, and move on in a dense body, the centre packed close and the flanks in loose order. Neither is facility for feeding secure d. The Dutch hunters say that the animals in the rear of the herd are thin, those in front having eaten all the grass, and that at the change of the monsoon, when the spring- buck columns turn north again, these become the leaders, and take their turn to fatten. Two species of bird habitually " march " great distances, and in numerous bodies, but there is a difference in the method and intelligence shown in their travels. The guinea-fowls travel in troops often numbering over a hundred ; but, like true Africans, they always walk in single file, making their way through the scrub or forest down to the drinking-place in the same primitive order as the African caravan crosses the continent. The "single file" order has only one advantage. It saves the trouble of widen- ing paths,—wherefore the whole Central African region is connected by paths nowhere more than eighteen inches wide. But the results are worse for the African than for the birds, for the slightest obstacle causes a halt and a break in the line, and the rear must constantly be hurried up after stoppages. To the guinea-fowls, almost the most active of ground birds, this habit of "closing up" has become a kind of conscience, as any one may see who watches the eager, craning anxiety of a tame brood to keep in touch even when running across open ground. The guinea-fowls' march is thoroughly African,—non-progressive and nninstructive. Contrast with this the orderly progress of the wisest bird of Europe, the goose, when travelling in companies. There are times when wild geese, some of the strongest fliers among the large birds, travel great distances on foot, sometimes to accompany their young, sometimes because they are moulting. Mr. Seebohm witnessed the passing of a goose-column when exploring the tundra. They came on in column, the old birds leading, and after crossing the Arctic moorland, descended to the river, and took the water in the same order. Large, heavy birds like geese could not possibly march for long distances unless their method and order of marsh were carefully thought out. That the average intelligence of these birds is very high is generally acknowledged; but it is nowhere so well shown as when they are travelling on foot. In the first place, there is no hurry,—every one goes his own pace, but that pace is deliberate. They walk in column, but the ranks are often ten geese wide. No goose touches or jostles his neighbour, and all the heads are carried high, so as to get the maximum of air. At regular intervals on the march the column halt and feed, spreading out in lines for this pur- pose, but falling in at a proper signal from the leaders. The writer has often watched these proceedings when a large flock of geese has been crossing Port Meadow, the wide green flat above Oxford. But their marching powers have been well known in "the trade" for centuries, and are still made use of abroad. At Antwerp in January a flock of three thousand geese were seen to walk along the quay, gently urged by some Flemish gooseherds. They were halted opposite to an English steamer bound for Harwich, and then crossed three abreast on a plank with low canvas sides on to the steamer. They then walked along the deck, descended a steep sloping plank, and marched along the lower deck into an enclosure, where they remained during the crossing. At Harwich they were driven up the plank to the upper deck, off the ship and into pens, where it is to be feared most of them were killed for market. This is only a survival of the old system by which the Norfolk geese were driven up to London in thousands without losing condition. It paid better, before the days of railways, to let the geese transport themselves. The largest drove mentioned was one of nine thousand which went from Suffolk, through Chelmsford, and on to London. As "a cart," not carts, was provided to pick up the lame ones, the number who "fell out" must have been. -surprisingly small. It may be doubted whether nine thousand creatures of any other species could have made the journey of a hundred miles with so little trouble. They took their journey easily, marching ten miles a day. The ordinary day's march of the German Army is thirteen miles,—only three miles better than the geese. But these are the champion pedestrians of all birds. When Lord Oxford bet the Marquess of Queensberry that a drove of Suffolk geese would beat an equal number of turkeys in a walk to London, the geese won by forty-eight hours.
Commissariat, the curse of armies on the march, presents few difficulties even to vast moving bodies of animals when wild. The only creatures which are noticed to suffer from hunger in these journeys are, as mentioned above, the rear columns of the spring-bucks. This is because the travelling animals are all vegetable feeders, and move as a rule in the direction of an increased food-supply,—the musk-oxen south in winter, and north when the Arctic summer uncovers the tundra, and the animals of the veldt or prairie advance or retire over their feeding-grounds when plenty follows rain or scarcity follows snow. Where this natural commissariat is not available, Nature has to overcome the difficulty by very specialised means. Many birds "feed up" for days before the effort of the over-sea migration flight, and carry their food concentrated, in the form of fat. The submarine " march " of fish is probably the only movement of great bodies of animals which is absolutely without trouble to the movers. With their bodies poised in water, with no effort except that of leisurely, almost effortless, propulsion, with the invisible and everlasting food-supply of entomostraca suffusing the medium in which they move, with no waste of force in wave- making, and almost no surface-friction of their smooth bodies on the surrounding water, their "march " is a triumphal proces- sion, so far as triumph can be claimed by an almost complete victory over all the difficulties of traveL
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