The Zoologist— August, 1874. 4089 



forms which from time to time have been recorded, and which, blown off 

 from their native bhore, find in the masses of seaweed, uprooted trees, and 

 portions of wreck constantly approaching our coasts through the agency of 

 the Gulf-stream, that means of rest and recruitment which finally enables 

 a few of them to reach a welcome though far distant haven. A remarkable 

 degree of capriciousness, which to me has always appeared mysterious, 

 occurs in the choice of localities affected by certain of our migrants : thus 

 the pied flycatcher will not rest until it has reached the middle and northern 

 counties of England, while the nightingale almost restricts its visits to the 

 southern, eastern, and central ones, never favouring Cornwall with its 

 presence, and but rarely going into Devonshire or Wales, or further north 

 than Yorkshire or Durham. Again, some species, exemplified in many of 

 the plovers and sandpipers, make our islands but a halting-place, pausing 

 for rest only on their way to unknown and probably far distant regions. 



" The mysterious law or laws which govern migration must always be 

 regarded by the naturalist with the utmost interest. Within our own islands 

 hardly a month passes by without the movement of some species occurring 

 to remind us of the existence of such a principle. In the early spring, 

 before the wheatear, that earliest of our visitors from the sunny south, has 

 arrived, the fieldfare and redwing, which during the winter have peopled 

 our hedgerows and fields, the geese, ducks and numerous wading-birds 

 which have been frequenting our broads and rivers, have, in obedience to 

 Nature's prompting, commenced a movement northward, en route for 

 locahties better suited, by the quietude and by the nature of the food found 

 there, for the propagation and rearing of their progeny; then, as the 

 rays of the life-inspiring sun strike upon our earth with daily increasing 

 strength, we begin to welcome in quick succession those little feathered 

 arrivals which make the spring and early summer seasons of so much enjoy- 

 ment and anticipation to all true lovers of Nature. March, besides the 

 wheatear, brings us the chiffchaff and the sand martin ; April's earliest days 

 herald in the swallow, wryneck, and martin ; by the middle of that month 

 the nightingale has made its appearance, together with a host of other 

 sylvan species; soon after, the cuckoo and landrail arrive; and on the 

 joyous first of May the latest of all comers, the swift, the nightjar and fly- 

 catcher may be looked for. A pause of a few weeks follows ; and, repro- 

 duction having been accomplished, then commences, as it were, the ebb of 

 the great tide of migration. The swift, which, as we have seen, was one of 

 the latest to arrive, is the first to depart; then the landrail makes good its 

 retreat to the more southern country of Africa ; other kinds follow in suc- 

 cession, all hastening to make their escape before such changes of climate 

 and natural conditions have set in as would prove fatal to their existence, 

 either on account of the lowering of the temperature or the cessation of suit- 

 able food. By the end of September, the great mass have departed, and only 



