HLUETHROAT. 325 



svecica a perfectly distinct breeding-range, but the parts of 

 Europe inhabited in summer b}' each are separated by a wide 

 interval. Thus the first, though local, breeds generally 

 throughout temperate Europe in suitable places from Holland 

 across North Germany, and nowhere in these countries does 

 anyone pretend to have found the second taking up its abode. 

 Then we have the southern and lower parts of Scandinavia 

 wherein no Bluethroat at all breeds ; but, as soon as we 

 reach the mosses of its subalpine and northern districts, 

 a Bluethroat appears, which is invariably the 11. suecica, 

 retaining its characteristic red spot throughout the season, 

 and breeding as generally in those chilly solitudes as li. 

 leucocyana does in the lower latitudes of Holland and North 

 Germany. In the face, then, of these facts, the evidence of 

 Dr. Altnm cannot be deemed conclusive, the more so as a 

 close attention to his very words, and the instructive figures 

 by which they are illustrated, shews that his bird never com- 

 pletely assumed the appearance either of R. icolfi or of E. 

 suecica, but that it did finally possess the full characteristics 

 of R. leucoci/ana, to which form it no doubt belonged.* 



The food of this bird is earthworms, insects and berries. 

 Its song, usually delivered from an exposed branch, and 

 never more eftectively than in the broad daylight of a 

 Lapland midsummer's night, is indescribably delicious and 

 varied, as may be inferred from the bird bearing in the 

 extreme north of Europe a name, signifying "Hundred- 

 tongues," which further south is given to the larger Night- 

 ingale. Its call-note is plaintive, and the cry of alarm 

 loud and harsh. On the ground, its movements are so brisk 

 and even that it has been said by good observers, among 

 them Bechstein and Mr. Blyth, to run Hke a Wagtail, but, 

 so far as the Editor's experience goes, and in this he is 

 confirmed by Naumann's opinion, its progress, though much 

 more speedy, is by hopping like a Redbreast, to which bird 



* Dr. Altuiu s opinion is also ably controverted in the ' CEf versigt ' of the 

 Academy of Stockholm for 1860 (xvii. p. 201) by Herr Meves, but this obser- 

 vant naturalist is certainly mistaken when he supj-oses R. Icucoci/ana to be only 

 the young of R. woljl. 



