ARE (GUERNSEY BIRDS BRITISH ? 



3U7 



of an islet from the mainland was but of secondary importance. 

 The Shetlands he looked upon as certainly part of Great 

 Britain in a geographical sense, as in the same sense he held 

 the Channel Islands to be part of France, and he conceived 

 that French naturalists should include the productions of 

 the Channel Islands in their general works on French 

 Natural History. He concluded with the suggestion that 

 to allay the fears of Channel Islanders about being " left 

 out in the cold " by both French and English naturalists, a 

 simple solution of all difficulties would be, as it seemed to 

 him, for British Naturalists always to include the Channel 

 Islands in their works under such titles as "Birds (or what 

 not) of Great Britain, Ireland, and the Channel Islands/' 

 In that way the word " British " would retain its legitimate 

 signification and no one would be misled. 



"Clermont" [35, Hill Street, Berkeley Square], in the 

 same No. of the Zoologist joined the ranks of the dis- 

 putants but changed the question into : " Are the Channel 

 Islands British ? " He held that anyone speaking as a 

 naturalist, and wishing to use accurate terms, would call an 

 animal or a plant British which was indigenous to the geo- 

 graphical group of the British Islands. Defining the British 

 Islands as including "numerous smaller islands at varying 

 distances from the coasts of the larger islands, but always 

 nearer to some part of those coasts than to any part of 

 the continent, he adds, " but this group does not include 

 the Channel Islands which are British politically only. By 

 nature and according to Geography they are as much French 

 as the Scilly Islands and Orkneys are British, so that their 

 natural productions must, as 1 think, be assigned to the 

 French province." ... It can only be the desire to magnify 

 the zoological and botanical treasures of this country, and 

 to enrich their cabinets, which tempts English collectors 

 arbitrarily, and without regard to the geographical claims 

 of France, to annex the Channel Islands to the British 

 group." 



In an Editorial note at the end of Mr. Pickard-Cam- 

 bridge's second letter, extracts from which I was reading- 

 two minutes ago, Mr. Newman said he most certainly ac- 

 cepted Mr. Cambridge's " simple solution " that British 

 naturalists should include the Channel Islands in their works ; 

 botanists, so far as he knew, had done so already and the 

 plan seemed to have met with general acceptance ; therefore 

 as regarded the literature of British Natural History there 

 appeared no great difficulty about birds. 



