Bird Migration from America to Europe 67 



It has also been long known that ships half way between 

 Europe and America have fallen in with birds travelling, 

 either singly or in flocks, in an easterly direction, 

 migrants of this kind having not rarely attempted to alight 

 upon the rigging, and some having also been caught 

 there. A case of this kind is mentioned by no less an 

 authority than Professor Alfred Newton, according to 

 whom Dr. Dewar observed on his passage from America, 

 about six hundred geographical miles east of Newfound- 

 land, flocks of the American white-winged crossbill cross- 

 ing the Atlantic in a stiff westerly breeze. Many of the 

 flocks alighted on the rigging of the ship, and of these 

 twelve examples were captured. One or two of the latter 

 escaped as the ship reached the Irish coast, and made 

 straight for the land. Two others succeeded in escaping 

 from their cages in the streets of Liverpool, and five were 

 safely brought home. The Professor draws the con- 

 clusion that many others are thus helped across the streak 

 by human aid — with what success may be inferred from 

 the American element in the list of so-called British birds. 



If strong westerly winds were the cause of, or exercised 

 an influence upon, the migration of American birds to 

 Europe, as has evidently been assumed to be the case, the 

 plover should be subject to such influences to a far wider 

 extent than any other species whose home is on the 

 other side of the Atlantic, for amongst the enormous 

 flocks of these birds which cross that ocean from north to 

 south one might expect that a violent westerly autumn 

 breeze would in all likelihood drive some individual 

 or other less robust than the rest across to the shores of 

 Europe. Such, however, is not the case ; whence the fact 

 of the non-appearance of this plover in Europe supplies 

 far weightier evidence against the theory of migrants 

 being driven out of their course by storms than all the 

 known instances of the occurrence of strangers ever 

 furnished in its favour. 



At the time when the question of a possible flight from 

 America to Europe was first mooted, an achievement of 

 this kind appeared utterly beyond the capacity for flight 

 possessed by birds, so far as this was understood, and 



