140 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



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 prioris " (meaning 

 the swift); " sed pectus album ; paulo major priore." I do 

 not suppose this to be a new species. It is true also of 

 the melba, that " nidificat in excelsis Alpium rupibus" Vid. 

 Annum Primum. 1 



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

 but no naturalist, to whom I applied on account of the 

 stone-curlew, oedicnemus, sends me the following account : 

 " In looking 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 



North African coast. The principal route of migration to South Africa, how- 

 ever, is undoubtedly by way of the Nile Valley and the Great Lakes. Our 

 knowledge of the phenomenon of Bird-migration, though increasing year by year, 

 is still but small. The following pertinent remarks by Sir William Jardine occur 

 in his note to the above letter (ed. " Selborne," p. 91, note) : " The letters from 

 his brother while at Gibraltar would be exceedingly interesting to White while his 

 attention was turned to migration, and there is little doubt that the great bulk of 

 our migratory species follow the line as suggested in the text ; at the same time, 

 however, some of the species, the common swallow, for instance, has a very 

 extensive range, and I believe is permanently resident nowhere. The more 

 distant cannot be expected to reach Northern Europe or Great Britain, which 

 in all probability are supplied from North or North-Eastern Africa." [R. B. S.] 

 1 The bird here referred to is the Alpine Swift (Apus melba), and Gilbert 

 White is quite right in his identification. The species has occurred some twenty 

 times in Great Britain (ef. Howard Saunders, Man. Brit. B., 2nd ed., p. 263, 

 1899). [R. B. S.] 



