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ON THE BIEDS OF MADEIBA. 



By Padre Ernesto Schmitz. 



You will easily perceive by my accent and style that I am a 

 foreigner, German by birth, naturalized Portuguese, and 

 little accustomed to public speaking or writing in English. 

 However, invited by friends to speak in English rather than 

 in German, in order to make myself understood by a larger 

 number of the members of this Congress, I will endeavour to 

 do so. 



The small group of the Madeira islands has a superficial 

 area of only 240 square miles, and is situated some 500 miles 

 from the coast of Portugal and about 400 from the African 

 continent. In the Atlantic the nearest land is the Canaries, 

 200 miles away, and the Azores, 500 miles distant. 



In spite of their small area and great distance from other 

 lands, more than 185 different species of birds have been 

 found in the Madeira group, of which 36 are breeding birds. 

 In the Azores, three times the size of Madeira, only 120 

 species of birds are known; and from the Canaries, with an 

 area five times as great as that of Madeira, and quite near 

 the African continent, little more than 170 species have 

 been recorded. 



If you ask me for the character of the ornithological 

 fauna of Madeira as compared with the European, I may 

 state that it is very similar to that of Portugal and the 

 Mediterranean. The last published list of Portuguese birds 

 gives 280 species, of which just half, viz., 140, are identical 

 with those found in Madeira, the remaining 45 species from 

 Madeira, however, never having been noticed in Portugal. 

 But the best manner of describing the ornithological charac- 

 ter of a country is by an examination of its breeding birds. 

 Only half of the Madeiran breeding birds — i.e., 18 

 species — nest on the European continent ; a few more, 21 

 species, are common to Madeira and the Canaries, and a few 

 less, 14 species, to Madeira and the Azores. 



Some of the Madeiran breeding birds are found nowhere 

 else in the world — namely, the Madeiran Gold-crested Wren, 



