88 NATURAL HISTORY 



broods toward the south at the decline of the year : so that 

 the rock of Gibraltar is the great rendezvous, and place of ob- 

 servation, from whence they take their departure each way 

 towards Europe or Africa. It is therefore no mean discovery, 

 I think, to find that our small short-winged summer birds of 

 passage are to be seen spring and autumn on the very skirts 

 of Europe ; it is a presumptive proof of their emigrations. 



Scopoli seems to me to have found the hirundo melba, the 

 great Gibraltar swift, in Tirol, without knowing it*. For 

 what is his hirundo alpina but the afore-mentioned bird in 

 other words? Says he, " Omnia priori*" (meaning the swift;) 

 " sed pectus album; paulo major prior e" I do not suppose this 

 to be a new species. It is true also of the melba y that " nidi- 

 ficat in esccelsis Alpium rupibus." Vid. Annum Primum. 



My Sussex friend, a man of observation and good sense, but 

 no naturalist, to whom I applied on account of the stone-cur- 

 lew, oedicnemus, sends me the following account : "In look- 

 " ing over my Naturalist's Journal for the month of April, I 

 " find the stone-curlews are first mentioned on the seventeenth 

 " and eighteenth, which date seems to me rather late. They 

 " live with us all the spring and summer, and at the beginning 

 " of autumn prepare to take leave by getting together in flocks. 

 " They seem to me a bird of passage that may travel into some 

 " dry hilly country south of us, probably Spain, because of the 

 " abundance of sheep-walks in that country ; for they spend 

 " their summers with us in such districts. This conjecture I 

 " hazard, as I have never met with any one that has seen them 

 " in England in the winter. I believe they are not fond of going 

 " near the water, but feed on earth-worms, that are common on 



* [Cypselus melba. The accidental occurrence of this fine species in 

 this country has been repeatedly recorded. Yarrell mentions six in- 

 stances : at Kingsgate, in the Isle of Thanet, in June, 1820 j at Dover/in 

 August 1830 ; at Buckenham, in Norfolk, in October 1831 ; at Rathfarn- 

 hara, in Ireland, in March 1833 ; another was picked up dead near Saf- 

 fron Walden in July 1838 ; and a sixth was killed off Cape Clear, off the 

 south-west point of Ireland, a few miles from land. Since that period 

 several instances have been mentioned in the 'Zoologist,' and in Mr. 

 Harting's f Manual of British Birds,' of the visits of this bird to different 

 parts of the British Islands. T. B.] 



