236 The Scottish Naturalist. 



distance of twenty miles. By the following day their numbers 

 were greatly diminished, many having moved on in their course 

 during the night; in two days more there was not one to be seen. 

 With regard to this same flight, Mr Jones has the following : 

 "Thousands — absolutely thousands — of these birds were observed 

 among the cedar-trees on various parts of the south shore, from 

 the Commissioner's house in Ireland Island, to Somerset, Port 

 Royal, Walsingham, St David's, and Cooper's, and as far north 

 as St Catharine's Fort." (I may mention, in passing, that St 

 Catharine's Fort is in St George's, but a great body of the flight 

 was far beyond this, to the very extremity of the Island, extend- 

 ing even into Paget's.) " In the course of two or three days not a 

 straggler remained, and this is corroborated by Colonel Wedder- 

 burn, late of the 42d, a keen sportsman, and a good ornithologist, 

 who contributed to the ' Naturalist in Bermuda ' an extensive list 

 of birds, with much valuable information. It is difiicult to under- 

 stand how such slender birds, with short wings and long tails, 

 which latter I observed were frequently blown over their heads 

 in the gale, giving them the appearance of being nothing but a 

 bunch of feathers, can cross any extent of ocean. But this they 

 certainly do, not only in the autumn, but also in spring \ and 

 Colonel Wedderburn records their arrival in April, when they 

 only remained two or three days." Holding this of Mr Hurdis to 

 be the right solution — and I can see no reason to doubt it — how 

 was it that these land-birds were in this particular spot D^ about 

 600 miles from Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and 420 miles off 

 the American coast, a little south of Charleston, if they were not 

 on their di^-ed line of passage from the regions about the Bay of 

 Fundy, to the Bahamas, or other Islands in the West Indies ,? 

 And a glance at the map will show this to be the true course, and 

 it is not very likely that another tropical storm, tending along the 

 American coast at the same time, should have placed them where 

 they were. 



Another of the shorter and weaker - winged birds, if I may 

 so call them, that were stopped on their passage in enormous 

 quantities on this memorable morning, was the Carolina Crake, 

 or Rail {Otygomet?-a Carolina), which one could scarcely have 

 expected to accompHsh so long a voyage, and yet it visits the Ber- 

 mudas regularly (' Ber. Nat.,' p. 45), arriving about the beginning 

 of September. Weak as this bird would seem to be, not flying 

 further than fifty yards at a flight when in its natural haunts, 

 yet it wings its way across vast extents of ocean ; and though a 



