WHEATEAR 1035 
animal, the shelter of a clod in a fallow-field, or a recess beneath a 
rock. <A large amount of soft bedding is therein collected, and on 
it from 5 to 8 pale blue eggs are laid. The Wheatear has a 
very wide range throughout the Old World, extending in summer 
far within the Arctic Circle, from Norway to the Lena and Yana 
valleys, while it winters in Africa beyond the Equator, and in 
India. But it also breeds regularly in Greenland and some parts 
of North America. Its reaching the former and the eastern coast of 
the latter, as well as the Bermudas, may possibly be explained by the 
drifting of individuals from Iceland ; but far more interesting is the 
fact of its continued seasonal appearance in Alaska without ever 
shewing itself in British Columbia or California, and without ever 
having been observed in Kamchatka, Japan or China, though it is 
a summer resident in the Tchuktchi peninsula. Hence it would 
seem as though its annual flights across Bering’s Strait must be in 
connexion with a migratory movement that passes to the north and 
west of the Stanovoi mountains, for Mr. Nelson’s suggestion (Cruise 
of the ‘Corwen, pp. 59, 60) of a north-west passage from Boothia 
Felix, where Ross observed it, is less hkely.? 
More than 60 other species more or less allied to the Wheatear 
have been described,” but probably so many do not really exist. 
Some 8 are included in the European fauna; but the majority are 
inhabitants of Africa. Several of them are birds of the desert ; 
and here it may be remarked that, while most of these exhibit the 
sand-coloured tints so commonly found in animals of like habitat, a 
few assume a black plumage, which, as explained by Canon Tristram, 
is equally protective, since it assimilates them to the deep shadows 
cast by projecting stones and other inequalities of the surface. 
Of genera allied to, and by some writers included in, Sazicola 
there is only need here to mention Praticola, which comprises 
among others two well-known British birds, the STONECHAT and 
Wurncuat, P. rubicola and P. rubetra. 
MYIOMOIRA. 
(From Buller.) 
Placed near these forms by most systematists is the group con- 
taining the Australian genus Petrwca, containing about a dozen 
1 See Dr. Stejneger’s observations in his ‘‘ Ornithological Exploration of 
Kamtschatka,” (Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 29, pp. 349-351), and those of Prof, 
Palmén (Vega-Exped. Vetensk. Iakttag. v. pp. 260-262). 
2 Of, Blanford and Dresser (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1874, pp. 213-241). 
