ON BIRD MIGRATION. 403 



Bird Migration in Great Britain and Ireland. — Third Interim Report 

 of the Committee, consisting of Professor Newton (^Gliairman), 

 Rev. E. P. Knubley (Secretary), Mr. John A. Harvie-Brown, 

 Mr. R. M. Barrington, Dr. H. 0. Forbes, and Mr. A. H. Evans, 

 appointed to worh oid the details of the Observations of Migration 

 of Birds at Lighthouses and lAghtships, 1880-87. 



Referring to its Interim Report of last year your Committee has the 

 satisfaction of stating that Mr. William Eagle Clarke, of the Museum of 

 Science and Art in Edinburgh, has been diligently continuing the 

 hiborious task he undertook of working out the details of the collected 

 observations in accordance with the scheme indicated in the Report made 

 at Bristol in 1898, and has fui-nished your Committee with the following 

 Statement, together with a Summary of the observations as regards 

 (I.) the Song-Thrush {Tiirdus musicits) and (II.) the White Wagtail 

 {Motacilla alba), which throws such a light on the Natural History and 

 especially the movements of those two species as has never been possessed 

 before. 



Your Committee feels that a great debt of gratitude is due to Mr. 

 Clarke for the courage and perseverance which he has shown in grappling 

 with the enormous mass of statistics necessary to afford the results so 

 lucidly and concisely summed up by him. Your Committee trusts that 

 its feeling may be shared by the Association generally, and that as a 

 consequence a grant of money may be renewed, if only to defray the 

 outlay which is involved by the prosecution of Mr. Clarke's labours. 

 Remuneration for his invaluable .services, which the Association will 

 remark he is willing to continue, is unfortunately not to be thought of. 



In its Report last year your Committee mentioned that one of its 

 members (Mr. R. M. Barrington) was printing the results obtained from 

 the Irish Lights, continued on his own account since 1887. That gentle- 

 man has since prepared for publication, at the cost of a stupendous amount 

 of labour, an Analysis of these results, which he hopes will appear before 

 the end of the year, and your Committee desires to call early attention to 

 what cannot fail to be one of the most important contributions to the 

 study of Bird Migration ever made. ^ 



Your Committee respectfully requests reappointment. 



Statement fxcrnished to the Committee. 

 By Wm. Eagle Clarke. 



The extraction of the records of occurrc noes of birds in Great Britain 

 and Ireland, culled from the voluminous periodical and other literature 

 published during the period covered by the inquiry, 1880-1887 inclusive, 

 has at length been completed, and has resulted in many thousands of 

 useful and important observations relating to the movements and occur- 

 rences of birds in both maritime and inland localities being added to the 

 data amassed by the Committee. 



This additional information includes not only a set of valuable records 

 for the inland counties of Great Britain and Ireland, which was a great 

 desideratum, but also comprises data relating to the occurrence of a con- 



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