1912.] 



REPORTS. 



363 



creature, Velella ; of both of these I secured a number of 

 specimens. 



Nearly every year a few of these animals are reported as 

 having been found on the Western coast of Ireland and the 

 South-Western coast of England, but there is no previous 

 record of them for Guernsey. Nearly every daj T for about a 

 fortnight, however, they were reported to me, and one day a 

 fleet of some thousands was floating off the S.W. corner of 

 the island. 



Curiously, whenever the Portuguese Man-of-War has 

 been discovered along the British coast, careful search has 

 revealed the presence of Velella also, so that Mr. Hughes — 

 as recorded by Gosse — terms Velella " the Attendant 

 Satellite "of Physalia. I think, however, that this is simply 

 due to the fact that the two forms are both so very common 

 in the warmer parts of the Atlantic Ocean that any current 

 which carries one of them to us is almost certain to convey 

 the other also. Their presence on the Guernsey coast in such 

 large numbers seems to point to some increase in volume and 

 deflection eastward of that branch of the Gulf stream which 

 runs northward past the West coast of Ireland, aided also 

 probably by the long succession of Westerly winds ex- 

 perienced during the past summer. 



F. L. Tanner, Sec, Marine Zoology Section. 



Report of the Ornithological Section, 1912. 



Once again the wryneck, chiff-chaff, swallow, and other 

 sweet feathered songsters that charm us so with their presence 

 during the spring and summer months, have paid their yearly 

 visit to the old home, and are now returned with their 

 numerous progeny to those warmer southern latitudes 

 frequented by them during our winter season. 



The why and the wherefor of bird migration still remains 

 a mystery. Many theories have been put forward to account 

 for it, and surely, if slowly, facts in connection with the 

 phenomenon are being established, but the key to the riddle 

 — the original impulse — still awaits solution. 



As, however, practically all birds, I believe, are now 

 proved to migrate in a small or large way, may it not be that 

 migration in the wider sense had its beginning in very short 

 journeys indulged in by some species, perhaps for no very 

 particular reason, and that gradually through long ages these 

 journeys have lengthened out in both directions, until brief 



