2 40 THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 



our coast in the Zoologist and elsewhere. In 1881 

 tlie investigation was countenanced and authorized 

 by the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, and a Committee appointed to carry on the 

 work, and make annual reports thereon. Gradually 

 the area of observation has been extended, until the 

 stations numbered upwards of two hundred. Nine 

 Annual Reports have been compiled chiefly from 

 schedules sent in by light-keepers, dealing not only 

 with the customary spring and autumn migrations 

 for every year, but with much evident Local Move- 

 ment and Nomadic Migration. The result is an 

 immense amount of information — of raw material, 

 from which it may be possible to obtain some 

 important facts, but the labour will require very 

 great care and discrimination on the part of the com- 

 piler, who must also have a keen appreciation and 

 extended knowledge of Migration as a whole. To 

 attempt wide deductions on Migration Philosophy 

 from this mass of raw localized material will end in 

 failure. It is evident in many of these reports that 

 too much importance has been attached to what 

 are purely local and fortuitously initiated move- 

 ments, and that many of the birds referred to are 

 not flighting at all in any sense of the term. 



Be all this as it may, however, w^e are now 

 furnished with abundant evidence that Migration 

 over the British Islands prevails to a very astonish- 

 ing but previously utterly unsuspected extent. No 

 longer does Heligoland stand alone in its Migration 

 importance ; scenes just as wonderful and just as 



