io~ ^ \Afexander Goodman More. [i859 



CHAPTER XV. 



"FIRST YEAR OF CRITICAL BOTANY." 

 [I859-] 



To Mr. Newbould's visit of the preceding summer he 

 ascribes the impulse which made 1859 his u first year of 

 critical work at botany" work which now, for some years, 

 so engrossed him that he would occasionally speak of 

 himself as if he had quite dropped out of the ornitholo- 

 gical pale. Nevertheless, the period was really one of 

 increased activity in bird-study too, and he was perhaps 

 never further from becoming a mere botanist than when 

 doing the hardest botanical work. 



No sooner was the cataloguing of Dr. Bromfield's Her- 

 barium off his hands, than a paper on the Migration of 

 Birds was begun. This was finished in April, and appeared 

 in the "Zoologist" for May. Originally suggested by 

 reflection on the frequent winter visits of the Black Red- 

 start, it was intended chiefly to draw attention to the 

 westward immigration of birds, in autumn and winter, to 

 Great Britain, evidenced by the occurrence here, at that 

 season, of many species which, in Western Europe, scarcely 

 go north of our own latitude to breed. 



On such a subject his attentive study of Irish natural 

 history yielded him a copious mass of illustration, on 

 which he freely drew, emphasizing the fact that it was in 

 winter that Ireland had received, as visitors, the Spotted 

 Eagle, Spoonbill, Avocet, Stilt, Ibis, Whiskered and Black 

 Terns, White's Thrush, Gold-vented Thrush, Spotted 

 Cuckoo, &c. the last-named two being African birds, 

 and none of the group in any sense refugees from the 

 north ; while Cornwall was a similar instance of a western 

 district not seldom used as a winter resort by birds whose 

 summer range included just the south-eastern corner of 

 England. The suggestion years previously talked over 



