V A Chapter on Wagtails 107 



"arrangement" in feathers; I do not think that a 

 Wagtail could look mournful even under tlie most 

 painful circumstances. No such misfortune, I am 

 glad to say, has happened to the Yellow Wagtail, 

 the sprightliest, boldest, and perhaps the happiest, of 

 its kind. It has often been called, in Latin as well 

 as English, simply the Yellow Wagtail ; but the 

 greater number of authors have given it, in a Latin 

 form, the name of the great English naturalist John 

 Eay, and even in common speech we often speak of 

 it as Eay's Wagtail. 



It received this honourable name some half a 

 century ago, because it was then first discovered 

 that, like the Pied Wagtail, it is almost peculiar to 

 Britain, and is quite distinct from the common Yellow 

 Wagtail of the Continent. I have never myself seen 

 it abroad, and it is certainly a rare straggler at any 

 distance from the shores that lie opposite our island. 

 Strange to say, it is found in Central Asia in 

 summer; and, as it is known to winter in Africa, 

 even as far south as the Transvaal, it may be that 

 two currents of Yellow Wagtails leave Africa in the 

 spring, the one going north-east to Asia, and the 

 other north-west to Great Britain. Here at least is 

 one of those curious involved bird- mysteries which 

 make the science of ornithology more fascinating the 

 more our knowledge of it advances. And, to add to 

 our perplexity, we have also to face the fact that the 



