Mr. A. Newton's tivo Days at Madeira. 187 



birds that, in the course of their periodical migrations, have gone 

 astray ; and it only requires the constant presence of a good 

 watchman to secure these stragglers and record their occurrence. 

 This I believe to be the chief reason for the otherwise unaccount- 

 able richness of the ornithology of an isolated rock, like Heligo- 

 land. Now, unfoi'tunately, the Madeiras do not possess a Herr 

 Gatke : as far as I am able to learn, they have not a single orni- 

 thologist permanently resident and always on the look-out for a 

 novelty. Ornithologists, and some of them good ones, have 

 visited the island, nay, have passed perhaps many seasons there; 

 but their powers of observation have often been limited by other 

 causes. They have either been invalids themselves, like Dr. 

 Heineken*, or have been the companions of invalids. Conse- 

 quently, of the character of the casual additions to the Madeiran 

 avifauna we are quite ignorant. On the other hand, I do not 

 suppose that the number of species really inhabiting the islands 

 is likely to be materially increased by any future observations. 



Still there is much in the Ornis of the Madeiras that merits 

 or requires further elucidation. The facts that Scolopax 

 rusticula is stationary all the year, and constantly, though in 

 small numbers, breeds in latitude 33° S., and that Petronia 

 stulta, departing from its customary habits of seclusion on the 

 continent of Europe, is met with on trees in the centre of the 

 town of Funchal, are such as, if they did not come to us on 

 undoubted authority, would scarcely be credited. It is almost 

 impossible that these should be the sole exceptional peculiarities 

 of their kind in Madeiran ornithology. 



To British oologists the Madeiras have for some years been 

 known as the locality whence they have obtained a plentiful 

 supply of the eggs of various Procellariidse. These were, I 

 believe, first imported into this country by my friend Dr. R, T. 

 Frere ; and it is very much to be regretted that we have so little 

 information respecting the breeding-habits of the birds which 

 produce them. Some of us who are afflicted with the mania for 

 egg-collecting, and who are sceptical on every point pertaining 



* I have not seen the paper said to have been published by this natu- 

 ralist in the ' Edinburgh Journal of Science,' 2nd ser. vol. i. p. 229, and 

 am only acquainted with that in the ' Zoological Journal,' vol. v. pp. 70-79. 



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