Ixviii LINES OF MIGRATIOX. 



generally north-easterly at tlie period of their autumnal migration, 

 and blow off-sliore for some distance from the land, especially in 

 the Bay of Biscay and the chops of the Channel. By keeping out to 

 sea and getting beyond the influence of the off-shore winds, they 

 would pr()l)ably meet a north-west or west breeze to help them on 

 their course to land again. Out at sea, too, the temperature is 

 higher than near the land, as is very obvious to anyone crossing 

 the Atlantic in winter. Warmth we consider is a great assistance 

 to migrating birds by keeping up their strength. So far, therefore, 

 from birds avoiding the sea, their main routes lie over it, as will 

 be seen by our ?»Iaps. 



It is much more difficult to trace the return routes of the birds 

 that come to us in winter, Sky-Larks, which arrive in countless 

 thousands in some years in the autumn and winter from the east, 

 and keep on to the south-west if the weather is very severe, do not 

 return again througli Devonshire in the spring, and may perhaps 

 find their Avay back across the plains of France to Holland, 

 Germany, Russia, and Siberia, from whence they come to us. 



Every autumn some birds not found in Cornwall visit the Scilly 

 Islands. These islands lie in the way of migrating birds coming 

 eastward from the Atlantic, northwards from Africa and South 

 Europe, westwards from the Channel Islands and France, and. 

 southwards down the Irish and Bristol Channels. So they have a 

 curious jumble of Western, Southern, Eastern, Northern, and 

 also American forms in their avifauna in even a more marked 

 degree than Devonshire. 



The number of Accidental Visitors which during the last two or 

 three decades has swollen the British List of Birds would greatly 

 astonish the earlier ornithologists ; but it is, we believe, in great 

 measure due to an agency which has been created since their day. 

 We attach due importance to the closer watch now kept at all 

 likely places around our coasts at which strangers might be ex- 

 pected to appear, and to the greater number of gunners who are 

 prepared to receive them, and can readily allow that in old times 

 many a rare straggler may have come and gone unobserved ; yet 

 tlie additions we refer to are scarcely to be thus accounted for. 

 We think that the great fleet of rapid merchant steamers has been 

 largely made use of by weary birds while on their passage, and 

 that, settling on the rigging to rest, they have, in a short time, 



