380 The Zoologist— September, 1866. 



which the naturalist regards as of primary importance. In the first 

 place, it may be observed that three out of every four communications 

 sent to the public papers had neither the names nor addresses of the 

 writers ; an equal number had no dates of the occurrences ; and again, 

 almost the only clew afforded to the sex of the visitors is from the bird- 

 stuffers evidently mistaking males for females, and recording them 

 accordingly : those few instances in which the specimens were pro- 

 nounced females, on account of the presence of two large and equally 

 developed eggs, were certainly adult males, exhibiting indications 

 usual at the breeding season ; a fevf others, which fortunately fell into 

 the hands of naturalists, were as certainly females, clusters of minute 

 undeveloped eggs being detected in their ovaries. Mr, Henry Steven- 

 son, of Norwich, a most accomplished ornithologist, has taken the 

 greatest pains to elicit the truth from a mass of conflicting and con- 

 fused evidence on this subject, and has published the result in two 

 invaluable papers iu the ' Zoologist,' pp. 8826 and 8849, but his 

 researches have extended only to the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 and therefore scarcely form a suflBcient basis for a general record. In 

 these admirable papers Mr. Stevenson fixes the number killed in Nor- 

 folk at fifty-five, and in Suffolk at thirteen ; of these, thirty-five were 

 females, which shows that the sexes were about equal in number. It will 

 be seen from Mr. Swinhoe's remarks, already quoted, that in its native 

 country this is a migratory species ; and we find that the direction of 

 flight, as the breeding season approaches, was westward from China 

 towards Chinese Tartary. It may also be gathered, from various 

 observations made on the Continent of Europe during the summer of 

 186.3, that its progress continued in the same direction ; and further 

 inferred, from the various detached remarks of observers in England, 

 that this great migratory movement was still continued in the same 

 direction, and therefore was not in accordance with the simple law 

 which governs the great vernal and autumnal movement, the direction 

 of which is from south to north in the spring, from north to south in 

 the autumn. A vast majority of migratory birds are insect-feeders, 

 and when the supply of insect-food fails, as it invariably does at the 

 approach of winter, they remove to southern climes where winter has 

 no existence ; but here was a migratory movement of a very decided 

 character, in which the ordinary migratory impulse seems to have been 

 entirely absent. The arrival on British land seems to have commenced 

 about the third week iu May, and to have continued uninterrupted 

 until the third week in June, when it ceased entirely, for we cannot but 



