2 Wonders of the Bird World 



the Gigantic Wheel at the Earl's Court Exhibition on the 

 preceding night, about 10 p.m. I had never studied a 

 Gold-crest alive at such close quarters before, and I thought 

 I had never seen such a wonderful little creature in my 

 life. As it hopped backwards and forwards in its cage, it 

 carried its brilliant orange crest in a manner not depicted 

 in any drawing of the species with which I am acquainted, 

 and, instead of displaying the crest as an ornament of the 

 male sex, as most people imagine, the brilliant crown was 

 overshadowed by the raised feathers on the sides of the 

 head, and was by no means in evidence as one would have 

 expected it to be. The Gold-crest is a common enough 

 bird in Great Britain, and I have often seen it in a wild 

 state, but certainly I never realized what a beautiful little 

 creature it really was, until I had the opportunity of 

 examining it in captivity. Then again arose the thought 

 of the incidence of its capture — in the middle of a big 

 city in the darkness — and the remembrance of this tiny 

 being's migration ; for, of course, it was proceeding south 

 by night, when the fatal glare of the electric light at a 

 great elevation lured it to its capture. And then I re- 

 called my experience in Heligoland in 1876, where I first 

 became acquainted with the phenomenon of bird-migration 

 in its fullest sense, when I spent a fortnight on that sea-girt 

 rock, and witnessed with Mr. Frank Nicholson and the late 

 Mr. Henry Seebohm, the autumn flight of many a migrant. 

 Heligoland is an isolated rock standing out in the Baltic 

 Sea, off the mouth of the Elbe, and in 1876 possessed but a 

 single tree of any size, which was growing half-way down the 

 staircase which connects the upland with the shore. In 

 this tree, during the daytime, settled many little weary 

 birds after their long journey across the sea, and as we went 

 down each day to the shooting-ground on Sandy Island, 

 several Gold-crests would be laid out for purchase by the 

 small boys of the island, who shot them with catapults. 



