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THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS: 



A PAPER ADDRESSED to the LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS of the ENGLISH 

 CHANNEL, and to the LOCAL ORNITHOLOGISTS of the COUNTIES 

 ABUTTING THEREON. 



By J. A. Harvie Brown, 



Member of Committee of Migration of the British Association. 



Between Varne Lighthouse in the east, and Start Lighthouse 

 in the west, along the south coast of Great Britain, no returns 

 have been received regarding the "Migration of Birds" by 

 the British Association Committee on that subject, although 

 schedules have been returned from all the other lighthouses of 

 Great Britain and Ireland during nine years' endeavours of the 

 Committee (1879 to 1887), and resulting in the Digest of the Re- 

 ports of the Committee of these years, which latter took Mr. Eagle 

 Clarke seven more years to work out, and which was presented 

 by him to the Committee at the Liverpool Meeting of the British 

 Association in 1896. The fault of this big blank in our annals 

 does not lie with the appointed members of the Association's 

 Committee. As a member of that Committee, I think the blank 

 should be filled in. I therefore address this article, hoping that 

 it will be circulated through them to the light-keepers of the south 

 coast of England. It appears to me that such would be all the 

 more important as an annex to Mr. Eagle Clarke's Digest, 

 because the existing blank leaves a part of his deductions un- 

 supported to the extent they should be ; I mean his conclusions 

 as to what he has termed in his Digest the east-to-west migration 

 line. 



It seems also, at the present time, specially desirable to obtain 

 positive records from these stations, as we have good reason to 

 believe that fresh series of observations will be before long 

 undertaken at prominent stations outside our British limits, but 

 upon the same east-to-west line. If these observations could be 

 arranged for upon this south coast-line of England simultaneously 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. J., November, 1897. 2 N 



