ROBINS ON MIGRATION. 11 



Dublin, November 1st, 1891).* If, however, we give full 

 credit to the statement in which it is said the bird struck on 

 twenty other occasions,! the census of the occurrence, though 

 still exceedingly small, affords us some testimony that the Eobin 

 is a genuine migratory bird. If we look at the reported occur- 

 rences which Mr. Barrington received, we find he gives, including 

 spring and autumn migration, eighty during the months of 

 regular migration, and of these forty-one are from the east 

 coast, twenty from the west, eleven from the north, and eight 

 from the south. J Crediting such as a fairly accurate return, 

 there is, as Mr. Barrington says, " a sufficient concurrence of 

 testimony from many stations to lead us to the conclusion that 

 the Bobin annually migrates in some numbers." § However, 

 without the evidence obtainable from a light station at all, the 

 noticeable increase of Bobins over a wide area of the British 

 Isles in autumn and winter can only be satisfactorily accounted 

 for by an influx of visitants from without the British Isles. 

 Nor do the local overland movements, directed chiefly to the 

 islands of the western seaboard of Ireland, necessarily sup- 

 plant the more protracted pilgrimages taken by the immi- 

 grants arriving on any points of the Irish coast. But what 

 interests me greatly in reading Mr. Barrington's article on the 

 Bobin in his 'Analysis of Reports, 1881-97,' is this: that 

 evidently not one of the twenty Bobins said to have struck have 

 been forwarded. n What became of them, and did the light- 

 keepers really secure them and identify them beyond doubt ? 

 Personally I have no reason to doubt that twice twenty Bobins 

 may have come to the lanterns, for even that number would 

 be far smaller proportionately than what I have furnished of 

 the birds I saw in a few months, and at only one lighthouse. 

 One would like to know what is really meant by the term 

 " striking" in the case of the above-mentioned twenty Bobins, 

 and were the birds killed, stunned, or even badly disabled, 

 thereby attracting the lightkeepers to put them out of misery 

 directly they were discovered ? This point interests me to a 

 great extent, because none of the birds which I collected 

 "struck" in the strict sense of the term, but simply came in 



* Barrington, loc. cit., p. 38. f Loc. cit., p. 39. 



J Loc. cit. s p. 42* § Loc. cit., p. 39. |j Loc. cit., p> 39* 



