276 Mr. G. E. H. Barirtt-llamilton on 



the seas whicli on all sides except the north hcni in their 

 practically insular home have curtailed and impeded even the 

 slight winter-movements southward which their co-species of 

 the broad regions of Siberia accomplish unhindered. Thus 

 confined and forced to occupy the same ground throughout 

 the year, it is possible that even in Kamchatka they may 

 have to endure a climate which, taken on the whole and 

 not regarded at any particular season of the year, may be 

 actually more severe than that of any other Siberian region 

 inhabited by iheir co-si)ecies. On the other hand, it may be 

 that, when our knowledge of local forms is more extensive, 

 we may find that there remain, after all, to be found in some 

 hitherto unexplored part of Siberia, representatives of these 

 species which are whiter than those of Kamchatka. A case 

 in point would appear to be my new Nutcracker, which, 

 although whiter than N. cnryocatactcs of Europe, is not so 

 ■white as the Central Asian A^ tmiltipundata. 



Dr. Stejneger discusses at some length the migration- 

 routes of birds found in Kamchatka and in the regions north 

 of that country. Little though we yet know of the avifauna 

 of these remote regions, that little is sufficient to indicate 

 that the migration-route of certain Kamchatkan species does 

 not lie directly southward, as might at first sight have been 

 expected, through the Kuril and Japanese Islands, but south- 

 westwards towards Central Asia. This adherence to a well- 

 defined south-westerly migrational route seems to explain the 

 total absence from the Kamchatkan Peninsula of so many 

 of the Asiatic summer birds of the regions bordering on 

 Bering Strait. The trend of these migrational routes is 

 held by Dr. Stejneger to mark in the main the tracts by which 

 the ancestors of the species affected reached by annual 

 extensions of their range their present northern summer- 

 quarters. One of the most interesting features of the 

 Kamchatkan avifauna is the total absence therefrom of many 

 common and widespread genera for whicli the country 

 would appear eminently suitable. An ornithologist cannot 

 be long in the country before the absence of Ardeidts of every 

 Bort from the salmon-streams, as well as of Columbida from 



