56 Review of the new Continuation 



Gatke described at length (Naumannia, 1858^ p. 419) his mar- 

 vellous success in picking up chance wanderers to that refuge 

 for birds destitute of a home, the island of Heligoland, and 

 recording the occurrence there of some eight specimens of the 

 Yellow-browed Warbler, adds yet another name to the species ; 

 but the stern laws of priority forbid our doing more than quoting 

 as a synonym his description of Sylvia bifasciata. As might have 

 been expected from von Middendorff^s experience, later ob- 

 servers in North-eastern Asia have again met with it in that 

 region; and Herr Maack is stated (von Schrenck, Reisen und 

 Forsehungen, i. p. 364) to have killed it on the Upper Amoor, 

 the district by which the boundaries of the Russian empire have 

 been recently ''rectified.'^ Then comes its treatment by the au- 

 thors of the work we are reviewing (pp. 74-77) ; and finally we 

 may refer to our last Number, where Mr. Swinhoe states that he 

 found it '* very common among the trees near Tungchow, in Sep- 

 tember '^ ('Ibis,' 1861, p. 330). 



We have no wish to cap with a moral the tower of confusion 

 we have shown to have been thus built up. That the Yellow- 

 browed Warbler is not a race favoured by naturalists, whatever 

 it may have been by nature, is certain. It has maintained a 

 successful struggle for existence only to undergo a struggle as 

 severe to get that existence duly recognized, and has been en- 

 cumbered with nearly as many names as a Spanish Infante. 

 May happier times await this poor little bird ! At present we 

 do not know much of what, in the language of the day, is called 

 its "life-history." It has occurred once in England, nearly 

 a dozen times in Heligoland, once or twice near Berlin, and about 

 as often in Dalmatia. All these occurrences seem to have been 

 at the time of the autumnal migration. In Siberia, according 

 to Pallas, it has been met with on the Ingoda, and perhaps on 

 the Lena ; but as no particular locality is specified, and the latter 

 river happens to be one of the largest in the world — only about 

 ten times as long as the Thames ! — the information is not very 

 precise. Its abundance still further to the eastward has been 

 noticed ; and in Hiudostau, as we have seen, Mr. Blyth speaks of 

 it as common enough, though chiefly so, we believe, in winter 

 time about Calcutta. Still that gentleman mentions its breeding 



