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boat, the bird without any apparent difficulty rose from the water 
and flew towards Heligoland in first-rate style! Another time we saw 
a Snow-Bunting, evidently exhausted very much, because it was float- 
ing scarcely 500 yards from the island. At the approach of my 
boat, this bird also very lightly rose from the water, but it was so 
weak that it had to resume its unnatural resting-place after proceed- 
ing about thirty or forty yards towards the rocks. We went after 
it again, and for a third time, but with the same result, whereupon 
we refrained from all further attempts at forcing our well-intended 
assistance upon so obstinate a fellow—the more so, as we entertained 
no doubts that after a little rest he would obtain a more solid foot- 
ing without any help of ours. 
I will give one more instance of this propensity in birds—m all 
my experience, the most striking : this time it was a Mountain-Finch 
which had been compelled to alight for rest on the water of the sea ; 
it was about three miles east of Heligoland. When this bird was 
approached by the boat, it rose very easily, mounted into the air to 
a great height—as birds do when starting for their migratorial ex- 
cursions—and then struck out steadily in a southern direction, with- 
out taking any notice whatever of the island. 
Although I believe in the foregomg to have proved sufficiently the 
possibility of birds being capable to cross on the wing from the 
United States of America to Great Britain, the greatest probability 
that they do so is still shown by the proportion the number of 
American birds obtained in Great Britain bears to that of those ob- 
tained in the whole of Europe. Yarrell, in his ‘ British Birds,’ 1845, 
mentions more than forty instances cf that description ; Tringa ru- 
fescens and Scolopax grisea having been obtained six times each! 
whereas, Germany, Holland, and France together offer but very few 
instances—some of which scarcely rest on good authority. 
Heligoland seems to forma happy centre. Here the Gulls of the 
Arctic Sea, Larus rossii and sabinii, meet the Numidian Crane, Grus 
virgo, Lanius phenicurus, and other African birds ; whilst the United 
States send Mimus rufus and T. lividus, Sylvicola virens, Charadrius 
virginicus, and others, to meet deputations from the far east of Asia 
consisting of Turdus ruficollis and T. varius, Sylvia javanica, S. cali- 
gata, and S. certhiola, Emberiza rustica, E. pusilla, and E. aureola, 
Pyrrhula rosea and a great many others. 
All these birds, together with a great number of acquisitions quite 
as valuable for the European Ornis, all captured on this island, are 
preserved in my collection—a collection, which, although scarcely 
approaching to three hundred specimens, has, by Blasius, been pro- 
nounced to be “the most interesting between Paris and Petersburg.” 
Heligoland, January 1860. 
