436 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



birds were silent, and the lovely woods in that most charming place, 

 Berchtesgaden, " the gem of Bavaria," seemed almost deserted. At 

 the beginning of July the Garden Warbler and Bonelli's Warbler 

 were singing, but they gradually ceased, and the only very interesting 

 birds I noted later on were the Golden Oriole and the Crested Tit. 

 When I left I had only a list of thirty-eight species to my credit, 

 the Buzzard and the Sparrow-Hawk representing the birds of prey. 

 In order to reach my second chaplaincy we took a long and delightful 

 journey through Salzburg, the Tirol, Innsbruck, and the Arlberg to 

 Luzern ; there we had the Black Kite hovering lazily over the Lake, 

 and the Alpine Swifts with their shrill and pleasant cries breeding in 

 the Old Town at the covered bridge. At the Ehone Glacier we 

 heard the shrill cries of the Marmots even in the hotel ; they 

 abounded in the neighbouring rocks. Five of these little animals 

 are kept in a cage in the hotel grounds, and when winter comes on, 

 and Herr Seilers's great hotel is closed on Oct. 1st, they are trans- 

 ferred to the cellar to sleep until the spring ; but last winter, the 

 director told me, one of the five did not sleep, but, he added, " he is 

 sleeping now!" The predominant bird in the Ehone Valley is cer- 

 tainly the Alpine Pipit ; there were numbers of these birds always 

 about the hotel stables, where sometimes three hundred and fifty 

 horses rested for the night. Are there two species there ? Some of 

 the birds were quite greyish, with no spots whatever on the breast, 

 whilst others were profusely spotted, and their backs and wings 

 were a rich brown. We walked twice over the Grimsel Pass, and saw 

 no birds — all was still and desolate, and twice over the Nucka Pass, 

 and there, at a height of about 7990 ft., the House-Martins had their 

 nests in the Nucka Blicts Hotel ; no other bird of the Swallow kind 

 was to be found. On our second excursion to the Nucka Hotel, 

 which commands what I think is the most wonderful view in 

 Switzerland — the majestic Weisshorn shining in perpetual snow fifty 

 miles away — we had our best " find." My wife drew my attention to 

 a brown bird dropping into the road from an overhanging rock ; it 

 was followed by five or six more. They were quite new to me. We 

 drew near cautiously, and I observed them carefully with my glass. 

 They seemed very like Thrushes, but were of a uniform dull brown 

 with a red spot below the scapulars. They repeatedly flew up and 

 down from the rocks to the road, uttering a musical cry something 

 like a Sky-Lark's, and I was greatly puzzled as to their identity. 

 Going on a little farther to the Hotel Belvedere, at a height of about 

 7300 ft., as we stood near the verandah outside, a bird alighted on 



