474 



Cambridgeshire being very numerous. At the same season 

 in 1868, there was another and perhaps a larger immigration, 

 which, beginning as before with Shetland, reached quite 

 across Scotland, as testified by Mr. Gray, but the number 

 appearing in England does not seem to have been so great 

 as in 1861. In Ireland, Thompson and Mr. Watters have 

 noticed about twenty examples, nearly all in autumn or 

 winter, and undoubtedly wanderers from similar migrating 

 bands, for the species is not known to breed in that king- 

 dom ; but Mr. Blake Knox informed the Editor that it has 

 occurred in many other instances, chiefly in the north of the 

 island, which have not been recorded. 



The migratory movements of 1861 and 1868 brought this 

 bird to the Faeroes, where in September of the former year 

 Herr Muller got two examples, and in October of the latter 

 three came to his knowledge ; but without such casual events 

 the range of this species is very wide. There is no doubt as 

 to its inhabiting every European country, and Messrs. 

 Dresser and Sharpe consider that it reaches across Siberia to 

 Japan ; for, on comparison, they could see no difference in 

 specimens brought from that empire. In Asia its northern 

 extension depends of course on the tracts of forests ; but its 

 southern limits are very uncertain, for along them from the 

 Yellow Sea to the Bosphorus, occur a considerable number 

 of allied forms which have been described as distinct species, 

 and it seems likely that ornithologists will in future regard 

 some of them, though how many it is impossible to say, as but 

 local races of the present. Some years ago, Swinhoe (Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1863, p. 268) united four of these so-called 

 "species" which inhabit China, remarking that ''the further 

 north they extend the whiter and more spotted they become," 

 until in Amoorland the form is said to be identical with our 

 own bird. Another group of four more, occurring between 

 the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean have been conjoined 

 under the name Picus syriacus of Hemprich and Ehrenberg, 

 typical specimens of which are easily distinguished from the 

 ordinary European form by, among other characters, the 

 absence of a black bar behind the ear-coverts, and the pre- 



