168 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



view is afforded by the appearance in Great Britain of numerous 

 birds of Western Africa and Spain ; for instance, Accentor 

 alpinus, Merops apiaster, Cypselus melba, Cursorius europceus, and 

 others, most of which have been obtained from twenty to thirty 

 times, and thus under the same circumstances must have resumed 

 their spring migration, which in their case, however, lies in a 

 northern direction. 



The foregoing statements will, I trust, prove that the much- 

 debated exceptional visitors of Central and Western Europe 

 consist not of individuals which ramble at random about the 

 world, but that, since their appearance from homes so widely 

 separated takes place at as widely separated fixed seasons, and 

 to a great extent depends on the age of the wanderers, these 

 exceptional movements of each of these two groups must of 

 necessity also be governed by fixed recurring causes. Ornitholo- 

 gists ought to give up the worn-out myth of inexperienced young 

 birds dependent on the teaching and guidance of their experienced 

 parents ; for the moment the young are tolerably well able to 

 take care of themselves, parents and young separate, and be- 

 come perfect strangers to each other. The first perfect plumage 

 of the latter being completed in a few weeks, they start of their 

 own accord, and entirely by themselves, on their first migratory 

 excursion, whilst many of the parent birds devote themselves to 

 a second brood, or, at all events, have to go through the tedious 

 process of change by moult of their entire plumage, being thus 

 detained for one to two months from following their offspring into 

 winter-quarters. This holds good for nearly all regular passen- 

 gers in Heligoland, the sole exception being the Cuckoo, which, 

 leaving the care of hatching its egg and rearing its young to 

 kind-hearted foster-parents, is free to go south whenever it 

 pleases. The most striking instance of young birds preceding 

 their parents in autumn by a month or two is furnished by 

 Starlings, Sturnus vulgaris ; young grey birds appearing here by 

 hundreds and thousands at the latter part of June, without in 

 any case being accompanied by a single old one, the autumnal 

 movement of the latter commencing about the end of September, 

 lasting through October, and occasionally till late in November. 

 Quite as regularly, but in a reversed succession, does the return 

 movement in spring take place, when the finest old males are in- 

 variably the first to appear; for instance, orange-billed, glossy 



