MIGEATION. 



47 



The fact is that the routes of migration are practically innumerable, but very important 

 lessons are to be learnt from their study. In most cases the present route of migration 

 may be regarded as an index to the past lines of emigration of the species. 



The periodical change which many birds are in the habit of making from northern 

 breeding-grounds to southern winter-quarters is called migration. Other changes have 

 taken place in the residence of birds of perhaps greater magnitude, but of an abnormal 

 rather than of a periodical character, which are more correctly regarded as emigration. 

 The most remarkable instance of the emigration of birds which has been observed during 

 the last century was the emigration of many hundreds, if not of thousands, of Sand-Grouse ^™sr^ti°n 

 into Europe in 1863. Pallas's Sand-Grouse {Syrrliaptes paradoxus) is a resident in the Sand-Grouse 

 treeless steppes and deserts of the centre of Asia north of the Himalayas, from Lake Balkash 

 in North-eastern Turkistan to Lob-Nor in North-eastern Mongoha. North of this district 

 it is a summer migrant to South Siberia, migrating in autumn to winter in the east in 

 South-east Mongoha and North China, and in the west to the Kirghiz steppes. This 

 curious bird was discovered rather more than a century ago by Pallas, the celebrated 

 Russian naturalist, who may be regarded as the pioneer of Siberian ornithology. Orni- 

 thologists are not agreed as to the place in the system of birds which the Sand-Grouse 

 occupy. Pallas thought they were Grouse, other ornithologists regard them as nearest 

 allied to the Pigeons ; but there are valid reasons for supposing them to be near relations of 

 the Plovers, especially of the Pratincoles and Coursers. Although a few examples were 

 procured by the Moravians at the extreme western limits of their western winter range on 

 the Kirghiz steppes, near Sarepta, on the Volga, in 1853, very little further information 

 respecting Pallas's Sand-Grouse was obtained until Radde, another Russian naturalist, 

 visited their breeding-ground in Dauria in 1850. In 1859 a few stragglers wandered into 

 Western Europe, and were obtained at Wilna in Poland, near Hobro in Jutland, near 

 Zandvoort in Holland, at Walpole St. Peter's, in Norfolk, New Romney in Kent, and 

 Tremadoc in North Wales, and were justly regarded as very rare and very interesting 

 wanderers from Central Asia. In 1863, however, the ornithologists of Europe were startled 

 by a most extraordinary phenomenon : about the middle of May many hundreds, if not 

 thousands, of these interesting birds appeared suddenly in Europe and were shot as far 

 south as the valley of the Danube, North Italy, and the Pyrenees, and as far north as 

 Denmark and Scandinavia, a few even reaching Archangel. Great numbers passed Heli- 

 goland and arrived on almost every part of the east coast of the British Islands, whence 

 they spread inland to nearly every county of Great Britain, a few reaching the Scilly 

 Islands, North-west Ireland, the Shetlands, and the Faroes. In many places they attempted 

 to breed, and several clutches of their eggs were obtained, especially on the sandy coasts of 

 Denmark and Holland ; but, as might have been expected, they were soon exterminated by 

 sportsmen, gamekeepers, and collectors of rare birds. This remarkable instance of 

 emigration remains almost unique in the history of Ornithology ; but there can be little 



Attempt to 

 breed in 

 Europe. 



