VOL. VI.] THE 1912 INQUIRY. 299 



thought best to disregard these countries for the present, 

 while only two were received from Wales, but those 

 from England cover a good deal of ground and may fairly 

 be taken as representing a tendency one way or the 

 other. 



Some counties, e.g. Kent, Surrey, Essex, Yorkshire, 

 Wiltshire, Hampshire, Cheshire and Northumberland, 

 have been worked with comparative thoroughness, 

 though there are others, e.g. Lincolnshire, Dorsetshire, 

 Nottinghamshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, 

 Bedfordshire and Derbyshire, which have either been 

 omitted or scarcely touched on at all, and this must of 

 course detract from the value of the report as a whole. 

 Perhaps it is not too much to say that the inquiry is a 

 step in the right direction, and that we are now in a 

 better position to decide whether certain species are 

 decreasing or not, and certainly if the inquiry is carried 

 on, more and more valuable results will be achieved. 



No attempt has been made to suggest the why or the 

 wherefore. To arrive at the facts is all that has been 

 aimed at, though this has been in some cases not an 

 easy task, as more than once observers from the same 

 district have come to different conclusions. Of course 

 it does not follow that two or more observers reporting 

 different results from the same district have based their 

 conclusions on observations made in identical areas ; 

 more probably such is not the case, and the observations 

 have been made in more or less adjacent areas in the 

 same district. Assuming that the observations are of 

 equal value, of which we have very little evidence one 

 way or the other, this would tend to show the existence 

 of what may be termed neutralizing fluctuations, i.e. given 

 a large enough area, the numbers vary but little from 

 year to year within that area, though the distribution 

 within it varies from year to year. 



That some migrants are decreasing, and that the 

 decrease is not confined to one locahty, cannot reasonably 

 be doubted. How far this is the case with the species 



