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VOL. XI.} C. J. ALEXANDER. 205 
that has lasted twelve years without a break, except when 
we were together. 
Amongst the thousand joyful memories of this close 
comradeship that crowd through my mind it is impossible 
to choose those things most worthy of record, for many 
things that mean a great deal to me might seem trivial to 
others. 
Some characteristics of our methods may be noted. We 
always found our chief interest in observing the habits of 
birds during those seasons when domestic duties are not 
uppermost in their minds. The month of June, which to 
the egger is, I suppose, the most exciting month of the year, 
was to us the dullest. True, after a time, we found a satis- 
factory way of occupying that month, by “ mapping ”’ the 
summer migrants in their nesting-areas, but as an important 
' part of this was comprised in the effort to discover just 
when each pair arrived, the really effective mapping was 
generally finished by the end of May. Still, we were not 
slow to appreciate the close relationship between bird 
distribution and migration; so that in order to obtain a 
_ thorough understanding of migration it was necessary to 
study carefully the breeding distribution of all the birds 
of our districts. 
We made daily observations on bird song; and from the 
beginning of 1906 we kept daily lists of birds seen, in the order 
in which we saw them, noting those heard singing. The 
making of lists was always an immense delight ; apart from 
the daily list there were lists for the month, for the year, 
for the various countries, counties, districts, and sometimes 
even parishes, in which we spent our time. Much of this 
labour was, of course, of no scientific value, but it all tended 
towards accuracy and fulness of observation, and thus led to a 
number of interesting discoveries of the movements and 
partial distribution of birds. The complicated migrations 
and daily movements in winter of Finches and Buntings ; 
the formation, wanderings and dispersal of the flocks of 
Tits and other small birds; the autumn congregation of 
Swallows and other species; the passage in spring and 
autumn of Chats; the time of arrival and departure of the 
individual Warblers and Flycatchers; the comparative 
abundance of allied species —all these and other features of 
bird-life in Kent underwent a far closer scrutiny than would 
have been the case with less complete note-making. We 
gained much more pleasure from these species than from 
birds of prey and other large creatures. Small birds are 
much easier to watch ; they are far more abundant than large 
