308 



ARE GUERNSEY BIRDS BRITISH ? 



This Editorial note called forth the displeasure of Mr. 

 Edwin Birchall, of Leeds, who, in the November number of 

 the Zoologist (page 3,304) went into the matter at some length. 

 He regretted that Mr. Newman should have given even a 

 qualified approval to the proposal for including the pro- 

 ductions of the Channel Islands in the British fauna, being 

 unable to see that any useful end would be served thereby, 

 and the revolutionizing of their lists would be a real incon- 

 venience which, he thought, they should not be called upon to 

 undergo without good cause being shown. If the productions 

 of Guernsey and Jersey were to be added to the British lists 

 because those islands were British possessions, we must also, 

 he contended, admit the productions of Gibraltar, Malta and 

 Heligoland. Heligoland, in fact, in his opinion, had a better 

 claim to be considered British than the Channel Islands, the 

 sea separating it from England being everywhere shallow, and 

 there could be no doubt that long after the formation of the 

 English Channel there Avas a land communication with the 

 Continent across the space where the German Ocean now 

 rolled, of which land the speck called Heligoland was the last 

 remnant. Although with few, and those mostly doubtful 

 exceptions, all the animals and plants of the British Islands 

 were identical with Continental species ; still the sea was a 

 definite boundary, and species which had been subjected for 

 long periods to insular conditions had in many cases acquired 

 peculiarities which marked them as strictly British. The 

 insects of the Channel Islands, said Mr. Birchall, did not 

 exhibit British peculiarities ; they did not vary from the 

 form of the same species in Normandy and in other parts of 

 France, and had no connection with British insects, except as 

 being also members of the European fauna. Waxing 

 prophetic, Mr. Birchall went on to say that " should Mr. 

 Cambridge's 4 simple solution' be adopted, unless I greatly 

 underrate the energy and intelligence of our collectors and 

 dealers, so prolific would the Channel Islands be found (in 

 Lepidoptera at all events) that I should not be surprised if the 

 whole European fauna, of some six thousand species, found its 

 way through the side-door it is proposed to open. Our lists 

 would then resemble a comet, the insects of Great Britain and 

 Ireland representing the nucleus, those of the Channel Islands 

 its portentous tail ! " 



Was this meant to be complimentary or otherwise to the 

 Channel Islands ? Miss Carey evidently looked upon the 

 remark as complimentary to the islands, for in the December 

 Zoologist (page 3,324) she wrote to the effect that she thought 



