226 MUSCICAPTU^. 



towards India. In Europe it has occurred as a straggler off 

 the coast of Sweden, an example having been taken in the 

 Baltic near Landsort, and it has been once killed, many 

 years ago, near Copenhagen. MM. Jaubert and Barthelemy- 

 Lapommeraye mention two specimens killed in the south of 

 France, and, on Dr. Cara's authority, its occurrence in 

 Sardinia, which last fact is denied by Dr. Salvadori in his 

 new ' Fauna d'ltalia.' From him however we learn that 

 it appears, though very rarely, in Italy. Mr. Howard 

 Saunders states that one example has been killed and 

 another observed in Spain. Loche gives it as of occasional 

 occurrence in Algeria ; but it is not known to have been 

 met with elsewhere on the African continent. 



The ordinary limit of the Red-breasted Flycatcher's north- 

 western range is found in the island of Riigen and the coasts 

 of Mecklenburg and Pomerania ; thence towards the south- 

 east it becomes more plentiful, though generally a local 

 species. In this direction it inhabits in summer Thuringia, 

 Franconia, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary and Turkey, while it 

 occasionally strays to Switzerland. Its limits to the north- 

 east cannot so well be traced ; but it seems to occur near St. 

 Petersburg and across Russia to the Caucasus, occupying, 

 one may presume, all the countries lying between this line 

 and that before indicated. Marquess Doria found it not 

 uncommon in spring near Teheran, and this observation 

 points out the route it takes from its winter-quarters in 

 Upper and Western India. On the opposite side of the 

 Indian peninsula it is said to be replaced by a nearly allied 

 species, generally referred to that named by Gmeliu Musci- 

 capa leucura, and this bird, migrating probably in a north- 

 easterly direction, seems to have been mistaken for M. 

 parva by some of the Russian naturalists, who have thought 

 they had met with the latter in Eastern Asia even so far as 

 JKamtchatka. Be that as it may, there is no doubt of the 

 true M. imrva being, as has been said, a winter-visitant to 

 North-western India. 



The Red-breasted Flycatcher was originally discovered by 

 Bechstein in Thuringia, but it is worthy of note that modern 



