304 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



as the year before ; which was so provoking that I determined to 

 travel, while the summer was still young, until I actually found a 

 Marsh Warbler, and then to study its song and habits, and put 

 an end to all doubt. 



As I had read Fatio's excellent account of the bird quoted 

 in the second edition of Bree's ' Birds of Europe,' I thought of 

 going to the valley where the Professor studied it, viz., the Val 

 d' Heremonce, in Switzerland. But I wished to take with me my 

 old naturalist guide, Johann Anderegg, and I went direct to 

 Meiringen, in the Obrelane, where he lives. I did not need to 

 go further to find my bird. I arrived there on June 9th, and on 

 the morning of the 10th I noticed a little brown bird singing a 

 remarkably sweet and varied song, at some distance from me, in 

 cultivated ground separated from the river Aar by an embank- 

 ment overgrown by scrub and weeds. I made further acquain- 

 tance with the singer, and soon satisfied myself as to his identity. 

 I did not get a sufficiently close view of him to distinguish his 

 outward appearance from that of the Eeed Warbler, for he was 

 very restless, singing now from a bush, now from the top of 

 some plant or pole in the allotments, and again perhaps from a 

 tree over my head.* But in his lively habits, his attitude when 

 singing, and above all in his song, he was entirely different from 

 any Keed Warbler I had ever known, and I had no difficulty in 

 deciding at once that the bird of the Botanic Garden at Oxford 

 was no more than a Keed Warbler gifted with most unusual 

 powers of song.f 



The bird at Meiringen was undoubtedly an accomplished 



* I find, however, that in notes made that day, I describe him as having 

 a white throat, a brown head (no stripe over the eye), an olive-broiun bach, 

 and flesh-coloured legs. The colour of the back is perhaps what best distin- 

 guishes this bird from the Keed Warbler when alive ; but it needs a quick 

 eye for colour, and a good steady look at the bird, to appreciate the difference 

 between this olive-brown and the darker rufous-brown of the other species. 



f The bird has never re-appeared at the Botanic Garden since 1889, so 

 that I have had no further chance of comparing its song with that of the true 

 Marsh Warbler. As my notes of its attitude and colouring tally fairly well 

 with the latter, and as Mr. Seebohm says (Brit. Birds, i. 377) that the Marsh 

 Warbler's song is occasionally like that of a Keed Warbler with an unusually 

 rich voice, I am sometimes tempted to fancy that this was after all an ex- 

 ample of A. palmtris on migration. But the date (May 8th) is an early one 

 for its appearance in England. 



