1891-92. | THE MIGRATION OF THE EVENING GROSBEAK IN 1890. 181 
THE MIGRATION OF THE EVENING GROSBEAK IN 1890. 
By J. B. WILLIAMS 
(Read December 7th, 1891.) 
In a chapter on the migration and diffusion of animals in his Principles 
of Geology, Sir Charles Lyell writes as follows :—“ Besides the disposi- 
tion common to the individuals of every species slowly to extend their 
range in search of food, in proportion as their numbers augment, a mzgra- 
tory instinct often develops itself in an extraordinary manner, when 
after an unusually prolific season, or upon a sudden scarcity of provisions, 
great multitudes are threatened with famine.” 
As instances of these irregular and spasmodic migratory instincts he 
mentions the Leming (J7us demmus) in Lapland, (countless thousands 
of these little creatures, once or twice in a quarter of a century, leave 
their homes in the mountains, and march to the sea-coast ;) and the 
Springbok or Cape Antelope, which used to descend at intervals of three 
or four years from the interior of South Africa to the cultivated districts 
around the Cape. 
Birds as well as quadrupeds are subject to these irregular migrations. 
In April and May, 1888, great numbers of Pallas’ Sand Grouse (Syr- 
rhaptes paradoxus) migrated from their home in Tartary to Europe, and 
appeared in England, Scotland and Ireland in great numbers. 
They were first seen near Warsaw, in Poland, on April 21st ; near Leip- 
zig, in Saxony, on April 27th; but they did not reach England until 
about the middle of May. 
Though they laid eggs in several places, they do not seem to have 
reared any young that first summer. 
With the hope that some of them might be acclimatized to the 
country, Parliament passed a special Act making it illegal to shoot them 
until January, 1892. 
Great numbers were shot before the Act came into force, but there 
were several well authenticated instances, of those that survived the 
winter rearing young ones during the summer of 1889. A somewhat 
similar migration of the Sand Grouse occurred, twenty-five years before, 
in 1863. 
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