ecies of birds
migrate annually from these shores, and, although their departures are
usually chronicled in the newspapers, it must not without further
evidence be inferred that these birds have gone to look for the North
Pole. They may, as a matter of fact, have left this country to avoid
being arrested, for here one is continually being arrested. The
evidence in favour of the North Pole theory as regards birds is, that
nobody knows where they have gone to, and that as the rest of the earth
is round and densely populated their arrival would be noted somewhere
as their departure was, but their arrival not being so noted, and as
they must be somewhere, the process of eliminating all possible places
leaves nowhere but the North Pole as their objective. Now birds are a
very intelligent and strenuous race of people who build nests in trees
and have often five eggs at a time, and I believe that they leave these
countries because their nests are full of broken egg-shells, and
because the winter is setting in, and because they dislike cold
weather; and, thus disliking cold weather, it is unlikely that they
would fly to the North Pole where the cold is very intense, and where,
moreover, there is little food to be found, saving polar bears and
Esquimos, a form of victual for which birds have only the scantiest
relish. My own impression is, that these birds when out of sight of
land are enabled by a mechanism with which we are not yet familiar, to
convert themselves into fishes, or, alternatively, that they know the
whereabouts of Tir na n-Og and go there, or else that they do not go
anywhere at all but are simply translated into the Fourth Dimension of
Space, and are, thus, flying, nesting and mating all around us in a
medium which our eyes are too gross to penetrate.

"From a perusal of the evening papers I observe that the discoverer of
the North Pole is an American citizen with a complicated pedigree, a
long beard and a red shirt, all of which he hoisted to the top of the
Pole and left there for subsequent identification. I fear this was a
thoughtless action on his part because the Esquimos who live habitually
at the North Pole, but have not discovered it, will, while his back is
turned, take to wearing his shirt in turn. They are a communistic
people, I fancy, and no shirt will survive communism. Also, seeing the
fuss which is being made of their Pole, they may either hide it or sell
pieces of it to tourists as remembrancers