The Zoologist— August, 1874. 4087 



moving eastward in ordei* to pass the sea at the narrowest part. 

 "The advanced guard of this emigrant host," says Mr. Knox, 

 "usually makes its appearance in the neighbourhood of Worthing, 

 Shoreham and Brighton, about the latter end of August or early in 

 September, and is generally composed of detachments of naeadow 

 pipits, pied wagtails, tree pipits and yellow wagtails, the two first- 

 named species being generally understood to be permanent resi- 

 dents in England during the whole year. Many of these birds 

 certainly do remain with us during the winter, but I am disposed 

 to think that these are the natives of more northern and western 

 counties, which having proceeded thus far towards the south-east 

 are, as it were, satisfied with this partial migration, and do not 

 cross the Channel, unless subsequently compelled to do so by 

 unusual severity of weather at a much later period of the year." 

 I pause to say that I cannot accept this solution as satisfactory, for 

 if the migratory flock waited on the coast until compelled to cross 

 by stress of weather they must soon become uncomfortably crowded, 

 and again we rarely find birds migrating in any numbers in the winter 

 season; but I will proceed with Mr. Knox's account of unaccepted 

 migration, which precisely corresponds with my own views and 

 my own repeated observations. " But the troops of these autumnal 

 voyagers do not consist merely of dentirostral or exclusively in- 

 sectivorous birds ; the conirostral tribe furnishes many recruits ; 

 goldfinches, linnets, and greenfinches pass in considerable numbers, 

 and such multitudes of the first-named species are occasionally 

 taken that the market of the song-bird dealers is completely glutted 

 with them, even their most capacious family cages being completely 

 filled with recently captured goldfinches." A Mr. Robert Gray, 

 of Worthing, a few years later, writing in the 'Zoologist' for 1860, 

 stales that he has made it his especial business to inquire about 

 the number of goldfinches transmitted every autumn from that place 

 to London for sale, and found it amount to eight hundred dozen 

 in six weeks. The Rev. Arthur Hussey, of Rottingdean, gives 

 in the same periodical, and at the same date, some addilional 

 particulars of this extraordinary branch of industry. He writes 

 thus: — "In a statement I have received from one of the bird- 

 catchers here he gives the enormous number of 13,848 goldfinches 

 per annum as sent from Worthing alone, but the statement is so 

 made that it may be somewhat fallacious. Only four of the catchers 

 send the birds to London, three or four always taking what the 



