4088 The Zoologist — August, 1874. 



others catch at the rate of four shillings a dozen. For their own 

 protection in settling accounts with the London purchasers, the 

 above four are obliged to enter in a book the number sent. 

 I applied to the most respectable among them, and he has his book 

 still, but two have not kept them, so that I could not get the 

 numbers correctly, but this young man said he knew exactly how 

 many went out catching, so that, reckoning each man's share to be 

 equal, it gives the prodigious number before mentioned. The birds 

 are sold to the dealers at five shillings a dozen for males and two 

 shillings a dozen for females." The following statement of the 

 number of goldfinches caught at Worthing in a year is from the 

 same source : — 



Total - about 1154 dozen. 



Hence we may conclude the migration of seed-eating birds is a 

 phenomenon as regular, though not so complete, as that of the 

 insect-eaters. 



It seemed desirable thus to travel over the previously explored 

 ground, before quoting Mr. Gould's valuable observations both on 

 migration generally and on partial or unsystematic migration : 

 I now take up the former theme, quoting Mr. Gould : — 



" Besides being tenanted by about one hundred and fifty stationary 

 species, Great Britain has migrants aud occasional visitants from the four 

 points of the compass ; thus, in spring, nearly fifty species visit us from 

 the south — whilst in the autumn our milder and more equable climate 

 attracts a still larger number from the north, who instinctively know they will 

 here find that food and shelter, which the rigorous winters of more northern 

 regions deny to them. In addition to this true and characteristic migration, 

 our islauds are occasionally resorted to by certain species which, from some 

 unknown cause, make a movement from east to west; wbilst the pseudo- 

 migration from west to east is exemplified in the rarely occurring American 



