462 ON THE OCCURRENCE OF AMERICAN BIRDS IN EUROPE. 
so obstinate afellow—the more so as we entertained no doubts that 
after a little rest he would obtain a more solid footing without any 
help of ours. 
I will give one more instance of this propensity in birds—in all my 
experience the most striking: this time it was a Mountain-Finch 
which had been compelled to alight for rest on the water of the sea ; 
-it was about three miles west of Heligoland. When this bird was 
approached. by the boat, it rose very easily, mounted into the air to 
a great height—as birds do when starting for their migratorial excur- 
sions—and then struck out steadily in a southern direction, without 
taking any notice whatever of the island. 
Although I believe in the foregoing to have proved sufficiently the 
possibility of birds being capable to cross on the wing from the 
United States of America to Great. Britain, the greatest probability 
that they do so is still shown by the proportion the number of Ameri- 
can birds obtained in Great Britain bears to that of those obtained in 
the whole of Europe. Yarrell, in his “British Birds,” 1845, men- 
tions more than forty instances of that description; Tringa rufescens 
and Scolopax grisea having been obtained six times each! whereas 
Germany, Holland, and France together, offer but very few instances— 
some of which scarcely rest on good authority. 
Heligoland seems to form a happy centre. Here the gulls of the 
Arctic Sea, Larus rossii and sabinii, meet the Numidian Crane, Grus 
virgo, Lanius phenicurus, and other African birds; whilst the United 
States send Mimus rufus and T. lividus, Sylvicola virens, Charadrius 
virginicus, and others, to meet deputations from the far east of Asia, 
consisting of Turdus rufficollis and T. varius, Sylvia javanica, S. cali- 
gata, ani 8. certhiola, Emberiza rustica, E. pusilla, and E. aureola, 
Pyrrhula rosea, and a great many others. 
All these birds, together with a great number of acquisitions quite 
as valuable for the European Ornis, al/ captured on this island, are 
preserved in my collection—a collection which, although scarcely 
approaching to three hundred specimens, has, by Blasius, been pro- 
nounced to be “the most interesting between Paris and Petersburg.” 
