41.2 BRITISH BIRDS. 



almost as difBcult to follow as the most complicated plot of a modern 

 novel. It has been confused with so many of its near allies, discovered 

 and rediscovered, named and renamed so many times, that, even after its 

 synonymy has been cleared from the mere blunders of obscure writers, the 

 list of names, each of which is an alias of the Yellow-browed Warbler, is 

 a most formidable one. It is impossible to say whether Latham's bird 

 was this species or not. He says, on the authority of Pennant, that it 

 occurs in Russia, where, so far as we know, the bird is as rare as it is in 

 England. Neither does he mention the important and conspicuous cha- 

 racter of the two wing-bars. Latham, like Linnaeus and too many 

 modern ornithologists, did not describe his birds, but only gave a short 

 diagnosis, intended to be sufScient to distinguish them from their near 

 allies. Diagnoses are all very well until new species are discovered, when 

 they generally become utterly worthless. 



It is probable that Messerschmidt was the first discoverer of this species. 

 He found it in the valley of the Lena in East Siberia. Pallas did not add 

 any thing to our knowledge of it, except the record of Messerschmidt's 

 birds, which he suggests may be females of his Motacilla proregulus. 



The bird was practically unknown until it was discovered by Hancock, 

 who was fortunate enough to shoot one, on the 26th of September 1838, 

 on the sea-banks near Hartley, about four miles north of the Tyne, in 

 Northumberland. In those days the appearance of a Siberian bird in 

 England was an event in the ornithological world ; but four years later 

 the mystery was increased by its rediscovery by Blyth near Calcutta. In 

 1845 Cabanis had an opportunity of examining two examples which had 

 been caught near Berlin ; and in the ' Journal fiir Ornithologie ' for 1853, 

 p. 81 (a resume oi which may be found in 'The Ibis' for 1862, p. 54), he 

 attempted to gather up the scattered threads of the history of this bird. 

 Unfortunately he gathered up too many; and for ten years three species 

 were confused together under various names. Schlegel seems to have 

 been the first to unravel the tangle to some extent (see 'Ibis,' 1863, p. 307) ; 

 but the third species was not detached from the skein until 1878, when 

 Brooks, the great authority on Phylloscopi, described Reguloides humii in 

 'Stray Feathers,' p. 131. 



Meanwhile the interest attaching to the Yellow-browed Warbler had 

 been increased tenfold. A second British-killed example, obtained within 

 a mile of Cheltenham, on the 11th of October 1867, by Mr. J. T. White, 

 was recorded in a letter from Gould in ' The Ibis' for 1869, p. 128, and is 

 now in the collection of Sir John Harpur Crewe. JNIysterious reports of 

 its repeated occurrence in Heligoland were doubted by many ornithologists, 

 until it was finally proved that it occurs on migration in small numbers 

 every autumn, and occasionally in spring, on that wonderful island, and 

 that since 1846 scarcely a year has passed without some having been seen 



