The Zoologist — October, 1866. 453 



eaten to such an extent as to be scarcely recognizable; moreover, 

 though professing to be a collection of birds killed in the Islands, it is 

 hardly to be depended upon as such, as I am told many of the speci- 

 mens were old skins collected by a Jersey birdstufFer, and sent over by 

 him when he left, without any information as to whether they had been 

 killed in these Islands or in France. This Museum I imagine to 

 have been the foundation of Professor Ansled's List of the Birds of 

 the Channel Islands. 



Cecil Smith. 

 Bisbop's Lydeaid, August 20, 1866. 



" Occasional and Accidental Visitors." — I have long intended inakin<; a few remarks 

 on the inU'oduclion into local lists of species which have no real claim to be considered 

 true natives ol' the country in question, and I am induced now to do so by the allusion 

 to the subject in the Preface to your ' Dictionary oi' British Birds.' Every true 

 naturalist cannot but have felt the incongruity of such birds as the swallowtailed kite, 

 the redwinged starlingf, or the spinetailed swallow, being mixed up in our ornithological 

 works and collections with sparrows, crows, cliiiffiiichcs, and other mere vulgar birds. 

 As you well observe, in the Preface to your ' Dictionary of British Birds,' the time has 

 come lor reform. Now that the geographical distribution of species, the existence of 

 local races, the theory of " centres of creation," and the influence of climate and food, 

 are being studied on scientific principles, the days for swelling out lists of " British" 

 birds with such quasi-natives is surely past. The custom savours more of the dealer 

 and mere collector than of the true and earnest inquirer into Nature, and had it not 

 unfortunately been sanctioned by such men as Montagu, Selby and Yarrell, it could 

 scarcely have survived so long as it has. But, on the other hand, is it desirable, even 

 if it were possible, totally to discard these illustrious strangers, to preserve no memento 

 of their visits, to give no clew to the identification of other wanderers of the same kind .'' 

 Are we totally to ignore the occurrence in Britain of many most beautiful and 

 interesting species, and to cast them into outer darkness as aliens and interlopers? 

 Surely not. Some of them, even when attention is called to them, may prove to be 

 really natives, although rare, as witness the case of the black redstart, of Savi's 

 warbler, and of the great sedge warbler. Had the first capture of these species not 

 been recorded and the specimens carefully described, the discovery of their more 

 fnquent occurrence and of their breeding in those isles might have been indefinitely 

 postponed. E\ideutly, then, what is wanted is some middle course, which would keep 

 these wanderers from swamping the true natives in our catalogues and collections, and 

 yet preserve due memory of their advent. What this course may be, it lies with our 

 ornithologists to decide; but I would, with all deference, suggest that in systematically 

 arranged faunas, lists and collections, the accidental visitors should always be kept in a 

 separate and supplementary series, while the indigenous species are given their due 

 precedence. This is done in the list at the end of Dr. Bree's excellent work on ' The 

 Birds of Europe,' and it seems to me that the example should be universally followed. 

 Thus our true Fauna would be shown in its due proportions: "the truth, the whole 



