4086 The Zoologist — August, 1874. 



Bombay, I decline this support to my opinion, because the autho- 

 rity on these instances may be doubted, or perhaps denied ; but 

 while rejecting the evidence as regards these two beautiful families 

 of birds, I think it might be shown that my objection to Mr. Gould's 

 statement holds good as regards the trogons, several species of 

 which have been recorded as inhabitants of the Eastern Archi- 

 pelago, and one as native on the continent of Africa. 



Again, I think there must be some mistake, probably a printer's, 

 — for they make sad havoc of an author's meaning, — in placing the 

 willow wrens and the goldcresls in the family Certhiidae : it is easy 

 to trace something of a connection between Phyllopneuste and 

 ]{egulus through the delicate lleguloides, but I think not with 

 Certhia. Mr. Gould calls this a "singular bark-loving family," an 

 epithet very easy to understand when applied to Certhia and Ticho- 

 droma, but which appears singularly inapplicable to the group as 

 extended by himself. 



On the subject of partial or unaccepted migration Mr. Gould 

 has much to say. In June, 1845, 1 revived, in the pages of the 

 'Zoologist' that truthful paragraph in Bewick's 'Birds' which 

 begins " Most birds are in some measure birds of passage," and 

 then I went on to show that the phenomenon of partial migration 

 was of more frequent and more extended occurrence than is 

 generally supposed; I found that the so-called "soft-billed" or 

 insectivorous birds were by no means exclusively the migrants, but 

 that the hard-billed birds, the inveterate and determined seed- 

 eaters, were also addicted to travel, and left the place of their 

 nativity in large flocks as soon as they were thoroughly able to 

 shift for themselves. I instanced the goldfinch, which is abundant 

 at Leominster throughout the spring and autumn, but retires before 

 winter, and is heard and seen no more until it returns to our 

 gardens and orchards in the spring, and resumes the duties of 

 nidification, incubation and increase. Ornithologists, of course, 

 expressed their dissent ; but, so far as I recollect, attributed my 

 misstatements entirely to ignorance, and acquitted me of all 

 intention to mislead. 



Mr. Knox, however, some years later (at p. 75 et seq. of his 

 'Ornithological Rambles'), not only confirms the statement, but 

 gives corroborative evidence from a variety of sources, more espe- 

 cially personal observation. He describes the manner in which 

 the migrants arrive on the coast of Sussex in the autumn, gradually 



