THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 365 



having been driven out of their course by storms. It is, however, 

 more probable that the species had at that time already estab- 

 lished itself in Asia east of the Lena. Nilsson, in his Fauna of 

 Scandinavia, states that Linnwus in 1758, and Brisson in 1760, 

 regarded this bird as exclusively a resident of America, but that 

 later on it had been discovered in those districts of Asia which 

 are situated nearest to America. According to Pallas {Zoogr. Ross.- 

 Asiat., 1811) the bird was in the last-named year already distri- 

 buted over the whole of Siberia, but until 1835 had not been 

 met with as a breeding bird in Scandinavia. Nilsson, however, even 

 at that time expressed his conviction that such would probably 

 be the next thing to occur, his prediction being verified by Pro- 

 fessor Loven's discovery of the species, two years later, in eastern 

 Finmark. Since that time the Shore Lark has rapidly multiphed, 

 until it has become one of the most common breeding birds in 

 Lapland and Finmark. 



The preceding statements have been collected from Newton's 

 edition of Yarrell's British Birds, and from Dresser's Birds of 

 Europe. 



In England the number of individuals observed and killed in 

 that country has likewise increased continuously within the last 

 fifty years, although, as compared with Heligoland, this increase is 

 only a modest one. Four cases of its occurrence are reported 

 during the thirties ; an example was shot in each of the years 

 1840, 1850 and 1853, and in 1859 three of a small band were killed. 

 From 1860 to 1870 the visitors increased to flocks of from fifteen 

 to twenty individuals, and in the autumn of 1873 no less than 

 thirty-three were killed at Spurn Point, at the mouth of the 

 Humber, just opposite Heligoland ; three years later this number 

 had already increased to .some eighty individuals, which were shot 

 during the autumn months of 1882 in the neighbourhood of 

 Yarmouth. 



It remains, however, a mystery where the many hundreds of 

 thousands of Shore Larks which, each autumn, pass across or along 

 Heligoland by an east-to-west route, pass their winter. It 

 cannot be in Great Britain, despite the fact that the vast majority 

 of autumn migrants arrive there by an east-to-west route, for their 

 number is so great that they would simply cover all the fields in 

 that country. What then becomes of them ? We cannot believe 

 that they escape observation, for the Shore Lark is a very restless 

 bird, and does not, like other Lark species, try to escape observation 

 by skulking along the ground, but, on the other hand, invariably runs 

 along the ground in a h>u-ried aiid restless manner, at once taking 

 to the wing on the approach of man, and incessantly uttering its 



