93 



solitary stragglers. It has been repeatedly shown, and cannot' 

 any longer be subject to the least doubt, that the flights of these 

 birds, which on this island appear far off on the eastern, and 

 disappear on the western, horizon, are the same as those which 

 a/rrive on the English coast from an eastern direction. Accord- 

 ingly, these sluggish flyers pass over the three hundred and 

 twenty miles of German Ocean in three hours, which gives a 

 velocity of nearly one hundred and eight geographical miles per 

 hour. This instance of migration speed is the more surprising, 

 inasmuch as it is displayed in the case of a bird which one might 

 almost caU clumsy, and which certainly gives no evidence of 

 corporeal dexterity." 



The identity of the Hooded Crows passing Heligoland at 

 eight in the morning, with the flocks reaching Lincolnshire at 

 eleven, may be proved to the satisfaction of Herr Gatke. But 

 to the writer it seems rash in the extreme to formulate a 

 theory of so great a velocity of flight on such slender evidence. 

 Even if we admit, though few will be inclined to do so, that 

 the Hooded Cwws passing Heligoland, or at any rate a small 

 portion of them, eventually reach Lincolnshire, what evidence 

 is there to show that the journey is accomplished by the most 

 direct route, or in an unbroken flight? If, as does not seem 

 unlikely, the first flocks which are observed to pass the island 

 about eight in the morning are, as Herr Gatke points out, 

 derived from the shores of Schleswig Holstein, from whence 

 they have started some half an hour previously, then those 

 which follow them until two in the afternoon — assuming that 

 they in turn have started from some other locality about the 

 same time as the first— will have already travelled, estimating the 

 rate of their speed at the same rate, viz., one hundred and eight 

 miles an hour ; some six hundred and fifty miles. Now the first 

 flights are not supposed to go much further than the east coast 

 of England after passing Heligoland, or, say, some four hundred 

 miles in all ; whilst the last flights, in order to reach the same 

 locality, will have travelled nearly one thousand. Does it not, 

 therefore, seem more probable that the first flights which reach 

 Lincolnshire about eleven o'clock in the morning, are derived 

 from some locality in Western Europe, where they have rested 



