388 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
the conclusion that of these twenty-one at least should be struck 
out, and has accordingly reduced the list of species to one hundred 
and seventy-six. 
From the geographical position of the Channel Islands it 
might be expected that the avifauna of the group would present 
some interesting features. There are some birds in France 
which seldom or never make their way to England; there are 
others which, although periodical migrants to both countries, 
never visit us in such numbers as may be seen in the more 
favoured south. Of both these classes we should expect to find 
representatives in Guernsey, and we are accordingly somewhat 
surprised to discover from the book before us that there is no 
bird in Guernsey with which we are not familiar here, and that 
many of the summer migrants to France are rarer in the Channel 
Islands than they are in England. For the absence, or at least 
great scarcity, of such birds as the Golden Oriole and Hoopoe, 
there appears to be some reason, namely, the changes which have 
taken place in the physical aspect of the islands during the last 
fifty or sixty years. Guernsey was formerly far more wooded 
than it is at present, and it is probable that the wholesale 
destruction of hedgerow elms, and the grubbing up of so many 
orchards in order to employ the ground more profitably in the 
culture of early potatoes and brocoli, by which the island has lost 
much of its picturesque beauty, has had the effect of deterring 
many of the occasional visitants’ from alighting here in their 
periodical migrations. But, if some species have decreased in 
number, owing perhaps to the causes suggested, for other reasons 
others have become more numerous. The Mistletoe Thrush, for 
instance, is stated (p. 32) to have greatly increased in numbers in 
Guernsey, especially within the last few years; and, although 
Professor Ansted’s list confined it to Guernsey and Sark, it is 
“now nearly as numerous in Alderney and Herm as any of the 
othez islands. 
On a great extent of the higher part of Guernsey, on both 
sides of what is known as the Forest Road, there is little or no 
hedgerow timber, the fields here being divided by low banks, with 
furze growing on the top of them. Furze brakes also are still 
numerous, the whole of the flat land on the top of the cliffs, and 
the steep valleys and slopes down to the sea on the south and east 
side of the island, from Fermain Bay to Pleimont, being almost 
