Bh'ds in Mr. Gdtke's Collection. 173 



statements, to throw new light on the difficult and, as yet, 

 little understood subject of migration than any work of its 

 kind that has yet appeared. 



Mr. Gatke has for more than twenty years kept regular 

 journals of the arrival of those innumerable flocks and parties 

 of birds which, during the period of the vernal and autumnal 

 migrations, visit his island. These include nearly all our 

 common English migrants. He has also scrupulously and 

 carefiilly, in the most painstaking manner, chronicled the 

 appearance of every rare wanderer that has come under his 

 notice during the same period, taking descriptions and mea- 

 surements and other notes of the fresh specimens, and in 

 most cases, when of sufficient value and interest, added it 

 to his collection. Many of these rarer and occasional visi- 

 tants ai'e wanderers from Northern Asia and America, others 

 from North Africa and Southern Europe. In fact it may be 

 almost said that birds of all countries are brought together 

 on this lonely rock in the North Sea. 



As an illustration of the value of these observations, and 

 the extraordinary number of rare visitants which turn up, I 

 will give an extract, which Mr. Gatke allowed me to take, 

 from his journal for 1869 : — 



'• 1869. 

 October 1st. Wind E., fine .... Emberiza pusilla. One shot. 



Anthus cervinus. Two, both old birds. 

 Muscicapa parva. One. 

 Turdus whitii. One. 

 Regulus modestus. One. 



2nd. Turdus sioainsoni. One, 5 mature. 



3rd to 4th. N.N.E., rain Muscicapa parva. Two, cf and $. 



16th. Turdus zvhitii. One, $ . 



16th to 31st. S.W.toN.W. (very Anthus richardi. Every day in small 

 bad weather). parties (from three to eight)," 



Heligoland lies directly in the track of the migratoiy flights 

 from Southern Europe and Africa to those great bird-nur- 

 series amidst the bleak inhospitable fells and arctic plains of 

 Northern Europe and the frozen tundras of Asia. Birds in 

 their migratory passage from one land to another follow, as 

 a rule, the coast-line, and find this red-sandstone rock a con- 



