MICHIGAN ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 7 
June 20—Excursion to Cambridge. Prof. Newton will welcome the mem- 
bers of the Congress and luncheon will be served at Magdalene College. 
Poke deme Prine or Wales is. down as Patron with H. R, EH. Prince 
Ferdinand of Bulgaria and Alfred Russell Wallace as Honorary Presidents 
and R. Bowlder Sharpe as President-Elect. 
Among the general Committees, Canada is represented by Mr. J. H. 
Fleming, of Toronto, and the United States by J. A. Allen, Frank M. Chap- 
man, D. G. Elliott, Chas. W. Richmond, Robt. Ridgway and Leonhard Stej- 
neger. 
It 1s to be regretted that all of the Committee members from this country 
will not attend in person. One of the great causes of disagreement be- 
tween our systematists and those abroad seems to be lack of personal con- 
tact between them. More intercommunciation would perhaps broaden both 
bodies and help to reconcile the discrepancies and antagonisms between our 
A. O. U. Check List and the British Museum Catalogue which so worry the 
curators of general collections. 
A NEW FACTOR IN MIGRATION. 
The April Auk has an interesting article by Austin H. Clark, in which 
a new theory is propounded as to the route taken in migration by certain 
shore birds, among which Mr. Clark cites the Golden Plover as a typical 
example. It is well known that this species on its southward migration 
leaves the main land of the North American continent at Labrador or Nova 
Scotia, and moves southeastward in large flocks over the western Atlantic, 
over or past Bermuda, eventually reaching the northern coast of South Amer- 
ica in the Guianas and northern Brazil. Here the Plover disappear but 
later are found on the Argentine Pampas and the plains of Patagonia, where 
they spend most of the winter. Returning, they seem never to follow the 
route by which they came, but travel northwestwardly to the eastern slope 
of the Andes, thence north to Panama and Central America, ascending the 
Mississippi Valley to Manitoba and thence moving northwestward to their 
principal breeding grounds in Alaska and Arctic America. After nesting, 
they, or many of them, move southeastwardly to Labrador, where they arrive 
early in August and remain for two or three weeks fattening on “crow ber- 
ries’ or “curlew berries (Empetrum nigrum), etc., and then taking the sea 
route for South America again. 
In brief, Mr. Clark’s claim is that these birds when migrating always 
prefer to fly on a “beam wind,” that is, in a line at right angles to the direc- 
tion of the wind, or as a sailor would say, “on the wind.” This statement is 
based apparently on the observations of Sir Robert H. Schomburek in 1848, 
in regard to the migration of shore birds over the island of Barbados, and 
of Col. H. W. Feilden writing of the migrants of the same region in 1889 
and 1902, supplemented by the later observations of others, including those 
of Mr. Clark himself. Applying the theory of flight always at right angles 
to the prevailing wind Mr. Clark shows how completely the theorv fits the 
observed facts. The southeasterly course of the Golden Plover is at first 
at right angles to the general westerly and southwesterly winds of the tenr- 
perate zone, which brings the birds from Labrador to Bermuda, or a little 
