68 Canon Tristram — Notes on the 



Africa is unexplored, and that quite possibly the scanty 

 scrub of the African coast-line is its true motherland. 



There is, however, one bird of Fuerteventura which deserves 

 special notice, the Titmouse, rightly designated by Mr. 

 Meade-Waldo Parus ultramarinus, though it seems to be 

 invariably smaller than any Algerian specimens, and gene- 

 rally to have a broader white band on the forehead. We 

 may easily trace its passage from the southern shores of the 

 Mediterranean along the western coast-line of Morocco, till it 

 crossed the narrow sea to Fuerteventura. Here it has re- 

 mained unmodified, excepting for its slightly smaller size, a 

 result not to be marvelled at in the barren desert plains and 

 bare wadys of the island, with such scanty scrub as to ren- 

 der it difficult for even a Titmouse to find sustenance. In- 

 deed, were it not for the occasional patches of cultivation, 

 with a few palms and fig-trees, I do not see how the bird 

 could long survive. But when crossing from the south end of 

 Fuerteventura, it took up its abode in the wooded islands of 

 Canaria, Tenerife, and Gomera, with their magnificent belts 

 of evergreen forests, it found abundant food, and attained the 

 full size of its Algerian progenitor, with a much darker back, 

 and it lost entirely the white tips to the wing-coverts, 

 which neither Mr. Meade- Waldo nor I have ever detected 

 in a single specimen from any of the three above-mentioned 

 islands. In another respect the Tenerife Tit differs from that 

 of Palma. It is found in all localities and situations from the 

 shore to the desolate cumbres, 5000 feet above the sea. It is 

 equally at home on the house-roofs of Orotava, the gardens of 

 country-houses, the evergreen forests, and the naked cliffs on 

 the summit of the Paso del Croce of Canaria. Not so, as Mr. 

 Meade- Waldo has shown, the Parus palmensis. I am cer- 

 tainly unable to explain why there should be such a contrast 

 in several respects between the avifauna of Palma and that 

 of its close neighbours, while these only differ among them- 

 selves in the presence or absence of certain species caused 

 by the intervention of man. 



Palma is, to me, the most attractive member of the Canary 

 group. Though more affected by human colonization than 



