274 BIRD-LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



wonderful flights of arrows on the migration 

 maps in this book are intended to represent 

 anything but excursions into the wildest realms 

 of imagination. These astounding views are not 

 worthy of serious refutation; but we feel com- 

 pelled to allude to them if only to show, and 

 that very forcibly, under what an overwhelming 

 burden of misapprehension the entire subject 

 of migration struggles at the present time. 

 We regret that such a useful and interesting 

 work should have been marred by these wild 

 theories and erroneous interpretations of some 

 of the most elementary facts in the dis- 

 tribution and migration of birds. From the 

 series of facts above given we may safely infer 

 that not a single species exclusively entering 

 the British Islands east, say, of Portland Bill 

 breeds south of Dartmoor; that all species do not 

 breed anywhere south of their point of entrance 

 to our islands; and that all migrants breeding in 

 the extreme south-west of England enter that area 

 from continental land south of it, probably by way 

 of Cape la Hague or the Channel Islands. The 

 various headlands and estuaries on the south coast 

 of Devonshire are the most important points of 



