40 2 



Unexplored Spain 



liave fled from Morocco to avoid the fighting then raging around 

 Melilla ! But in Spain a further and anomalous complexity 

 followed. For the Spanish specimens we sent home, on being 

 submitted to Dr. Ernst Hartert, proved to belong to a purely 

 Spanish subspecies — a race distinguishable by its weaker mandibles 

 and other minor variations. Hence the movement in Spain had 

 been purely internal, and it became ditiicult to suppose that 

 (although simultaneous) it could have been predisposed and 





CROSSBILLS, ADULT AND YOUNG (Loxia airvirostra) 

 Jerez, July 1910. 



actuated by precisely the same motives as those which com- 

 pelled a more extensive exodus farther north. Thus results 

 the curious issue — that presumably different causes, operating 

 over a wide geographical area, produced similar and simultaneous 

 effects. These immigrant crossbills disappeared from Andalucia 

 at the end of Auo;ust. 



Crossbills we used to observe in winter in our pine-forests of 

 Doiiana ; but owing to local causes they have now missed several 

 years. Their migrations within Spain are rather on the vertical 

 than the horizontal plane — that is, merely seasonal movements 

 between the higher lands and the lower. In Spain, denuded of 

 natural forest, the habitat of such birds is narrowly restricted. 



