290 REPORT— 1903. 



categories represented by the eight which have been chosen for particular 

 investigation. 



Regarding as a whole, the work on Migration begun by the first 

 Committee appointed at Swansea in 1880 to obtain ' Observations on the 

 Migration of Birds at Lighthouses and Lightships ' after the Association 

 had become acquainted ^ with the preliminary inquiry instituted in 1878 

 by Messrs. Cordeaux and Harvie-Brown, and continued for many years, 

 until it took the shape of a Committee to make a Digest of the observa- 

 tions so collected (which Digest was presented at Liverpool in 1896), and 

 then in its present form to work out the details of these observations, it 

 may be stated as another important result of the inquiry that the fact of 

 Bird Migration being for the most part carried on by night, which for 

 a long while had been only surmised, must now be accepted as proved. 

 The establishment of this fact is a very considerable gain, for though it 

 may tend rather to obscure than enlighten us for the time as to the means 

 whereby birds are able to direct their course on their wonderful nocturnal 

 journeys, several theories to explain that mystery are thereby shown to 

 be unsound, and, these being thus eliminated from the inquiry, its limits 

 are by so much narrowed. 



That investigation of the subject of Migration in general is far from 

 being exhausted will be very evident to everyone. Some branches of it, 

 indeed, are not touched at all, being precluded by the conditions of the 

 inquiry, which (extensive as it has proved) was limited to observations at 

 Lighthouses and Lightships, and thereby shut out all consideration of the 

 very interesting question of the distribution of Migrants in the interior 

 of the country after their arrival. 



It follows that the investigation will have to be reopened, and that, it 

 is to be hoped, at no distant time. The last thing your Committee would 

 wish is to discourage the prosecution of observations, but they feel bound 

 to express the opinion that no great advance of our present knowledge of 

 the subject seems likely to be made until new methods are applied. What 

 they should be it is impossible to suggest, but those used at present 

 appear to have reached their limit. Meanwhile your Committee regards 

 with much gratification the efibrts made in several foreign countries, and 

 especially in Denmark and in the United States of America, to obtain 

 observations from their light-stations, while the recent establishment 

 at Rossitten in Germany of an Ornithological Observatory is a hopeful 

 sign. 



Lastly, your Committee cannot present this, their final, Report with- 

 out again recording the uniformly constant assistance received from the 

 Corporation of the Trinity House and the Commissioners of Northern and 

 of Irish Lights, without whose cordial co-operation nothing could hav^ 

 been done. Nor is it fitting that this Report should be closed without 

 an acknowledgment of gratitude for the countenance so long extended by 

 the British Association to the object of the inquiry, and the material 

 support from time to time received in furtherance of the same — support 

 which your Committee know would have been often more liberally granted 

 had the funds of the Association permitted. 



' Report of the British Association, 1880 {Swansea), p. 605; Zoologist, 1880, May, 

 pp. 161-204; Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow, Sept. 30, 1879, p. 140. 



