38



Review.



form a complete vade viecum to all the different kinds of migration

that take place over our islands.


The whole of the second volume, and part of the first, is

devoted to accounts of the author’s visits to various Lighthouses,.

Lightships, and lonely islets round our shores. These accounts are

pleasantly written and include a complete list of all the birds obtained

at the various stations.


The island which has been most continuously worked in this

respect is ‘ Fair Island.’ This is a small island, lying midway

between the Shetlands and Orkneys, about one mile broad by 21-

miles long, it is surrounded by a belt of precipitous cliffs and covered

with heather, grass, stunted junipers, and on the lower ground there

are a few small ‘ loehaws ’ and a little marsh ground. On this small

area Mr. Eagle Clarke has come across within the space of 65 years

no less than 207 species of birds or 1 about one half of the birds that

have ever been known to have occurred in the British Isles. Of

these, five species are recorded from our islands for the first time,

while some species considered as rare stragglers have occurred on

several occasions and in small numbers. What light do these facts

throw on the general theory of migration ? Here, perhaps, our

author is a little disappointing. One might have hoped that with

his practical knowledge of migration and his undoubted power of

unravelling the tangled skein of the different routes taken by the

same species which, at certain times of the year, are taking place

simultaneously through Great Britain, some definite hypothesis

might have been forthcoming which would have attempted to solve

the large subject of migration in its general aspect.


Mr. Eagle Clark has decided otherwise and, perhaps, wisely..

This book is, as set forth in the preface, merely a record of his own

studies, no attempt has been made to investigate or criticize the work

of others, which would have been essential were the subject treated

in its more general aspect.


Many have rushed into print (or manuscript) from earliest

times to the present day, giving to the world theories of migration,

many of them of a somewhat wild and fantastic type, and if we are

disappointed at the absence of hypothesis, we have at least the

satisfaction of feeling that no mistakes have been made. At the



