Birds. 500 1 



weakest nearly to the ground. After resting for about an hour, or more, they again 

 took wing, directing their flight to the eastward. This again strengthens my convic- 

 tion and assertion, that swallows in their migration do not cross the channel to the 

 westward of this island, and I can trace them as far east as Gosport, in which neigh- 

 bourhood they were seen about three years since, by a near relation of mine, settling 

 by thousands on the telegraph wires : those seen here by my sons at such an early 

 hour in the morning, must evidently have been on the wing during the night, or a 

 great part of it, or they would not have been in such an exhausted state on their 

 arrival. Notwithstanding the early arrival of swallows last year, viz., on the 8th of 

 April, it was one of the latest and coldest seasons I ever remember to have experienced 

 in the Uudercliff, and, so far as my own observations have enabled me to judge, their 

 arrival is not to be explained or accounted for by sudden or temporary changes of 

 temperature, nor even by a succession of mild or fine days, but is regulated by the 

 forwardness or lateness of the springs in the regions to which they resort during 

 winter ; and when the increasing power of the sun invites them to migrate northwards, 

 they come, I have reason to believe, in small detachments, and proceed immediately 

 inland for both food and shelter; for it would be unreasonable to suppose that, at that 

 early period of the year, either flies or gnats would be found on the coast suffi- 

 ciently abundant to supply their wants. For instance, on the 22nd of April, 1852, 1 had 

 only seen a few stragglers in this neighbourhood, but on riding on to Newport I saw 

 a great number hawking over a pond in a very sheltered situation near the town, 

 which is almost surrounded by hills. Although swallows are endowed with an 

 instinct that strikes one with wonder and admiration, it would be absurd to suppose 

 that their instinct can point out, or make known to them, the state of the temperature 

 or the changes of climate in a different quarter of the globe, and from which they are 

 separated by two seas and a continent. This, I thiuk, sufficiently accounts for the 

 uncertainty attending their arrival. Last season they delayed their departure un- 

 usually late. On the 11th November I saw hundreds of swallows and a few martins: 

 they still lingered, and seemed loath to quit this happy valley, where all was still 

 sunshine, and where their insect-food appeared still abundant ; and the day was so 

 mild and lovely, that to see them darting past, their glossy and beautiful plumage 

 sparkling in the sun, it would have required no great stretch of the imagination to 

 have fancied that it was a genial April, not a November day: but halcyon days were 

 transient, and so these proved ; a sudden change, so sudden as to be even remark- 

 able in our most changeable of climates, burst upon us on the 14th, and at once 

 dispersed this happy group, leaving only a scared straggler or two, where three short 

 days before they were to be seen in countless numbers. — H. W. Hadjield ; High Cliff, 

 Ventnor, Isle of Wight; February 13, 1856. 



Note on the Common Dipper (Ciuclus aquaticus) near Norwich — One of these 

 very accidental visitors to this county was shot on the 20th of this month, near the 

 ferry adjoining the Cathedral Close. A specimen, now in the Norwich Museum, was 

 obtained some few years since near Hellesdon Mills; but rare as the water ouzel is in 

 this district, it is still more remarkable to meet with it almost within the walls of a 

 city, where the river, thick and discoloured by the neighbouring factories, contrasts so 

 strangely with the clear running streams of the North, the favourite haunt of the 

 dipper. — H. Stevenson; Norwich, November 25, 1855. 



Further Particulars of the occurrence of the Great Bustard near Hunyerford. — I 

 ti st it will not seem presumptuous in me to attempt to add a few particulars which I 



