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The Scottish Naturalist. 135 



It is no doubt an accepted fact that our European migrants 

 from the north to the south, and vice versa, cross the Mediter- 

 ranean to the shores of Africa, but that they do so by moving 

 east and west to three points only, and to those especially men- 

 tioned, and that they are thus always in sight of land, is so entirely 

 opposed to the many years experience which I have had in the 

 Mediterranean, and especially in the subject of migration, in 

 which I have always taken the deepest interest, that without 

 any wish to criticise I cannot avoid making a few observations. 



That many of our own English birds go south, travelling by 

 France and Spain, crossing at the nearest point in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Gibraltar I think very likely ; also that those about 

 the same meridian as Sicily and Malta go in that direction; 

 and those in the eastern parts travel by the Levant is natural 

 enough, but that all the other birds of Europe between these 

 meridians do so by travelling east and west is an alleged fact 

 which I cannot accept. Were this the case there could be no 

 regular birds of passage but merely accidental stragglers to the 

 Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, and other places. So very 

 many instances have come under my own notice, as well as from 

 what has been recorded by others as to the crossing and recross- 

 ing of birds at various parts of the Mediterranean, that I feel 

 pretty confident that European birds going north and south, 

 keep a pretty straight course, with, may be, a very slight 

 divergence either to east or west according to the line of 

 coast which lies before them in a northerly or southerly 

 direction. Thus the birds from Holland, Belgium, 

 north of France, and probably some from our own land 

 that have descended by the valley of the Rhone, would 

 not hesitate to cross the Gulf of Lyons, some going by Minorca 

 -and Majorca, others crossing the Gulf of Valencia to Iviza, 

 others still keeping the coast, would cross at Cape St. Martin, 

 while the greater part of our own birds, which have passed from 

 the Hampshire and Sussex coasts into Normandy, through 

 France to the Pyrenees, or crossed the channel from the Lizard 

 or the Land's End into Brittany over the Bay of Biscay (which 

 I think there is sufficient evidence to show they occasionally do) 

 into northern Spain or Portugal, together with the birds of all 

 those countries would without difficulty effect the remainder of 

 the passage, in no place much exceeding 120 miles, into Africa, 

 anywhere between Cape Cartagena and the Straits of Gibraltar. 

 Those that have come down by the line of the Alps would cross 



