ZOOLOGY. 



ON MIGRATION. 



By Colonel DRUMMOND HAY, C.M.Z.S. 

 [Continued from page 144). 



MR WALLACE, in commenting on the dangers of the pas- 

 sage across ocean to Quail and other birds, further says : 

 *' Quails cross in immense flocks, and great numbers are drowned 

 at sea whenever the 7veather is iinfavourable ; some individuals 

 always stay through the winter in the south of Europe, and a few 

 even remain in England and Ireland, and were the sea to become 

 a little wider, the migration would cease, and the Quail, like some 

 other birds, would remain divided between south Europe and 

 Africa." 



Of the dangers of a long sea-passage to migrants, and the 

 occasional drowning of many when meeting with tempestuous 

 weather, there can be no doubt ; and the same may be said of the 

 ship and its living freight. Hardly are we ever visited with severe 

 gales on our coasts but we have the most heartrending details of 

 shipwreck and the loss of human life ; but as it is with the ship, 

 so I take it to be with the bird — the proportion that cross in 

 safety is infinitely greater by many times than that of the loss 

 sustained. But it is not only to migratory birds on their passage 

 that stormy and tempestuous weather proves perilous, but even 

 to our very water-birds, whose home is the ocean, does this often 

 happen ; and on this subject Mr Gould says, — " Violent and heavy 

 gales frequently lend their aid to the destruction of bird-life, as 

 evidenced by our shores being often found, after their occurrence, 

 literally strewn with Guillemots, Razor-bills, and other sea-birds ;" 

 in proof of which he gives two instances, as recorded in the 

 'Zoologist' for 1872 — one in the Isle of Wight, the other in 

 Cornwall — in which for miles the shore was covered with the 

 dead bodies of various sea-birds, including even Gannets, which 

 were doubtless drowned at sea. But though this loss of life may 

 occasionally occur, I take it as by no means the rule that, owing 



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