267 
coast just north of Holland, and then rapidly declining south of 
Oldenburgh, through Hanover , Halle, Dresden, the lino of the 
Riesen Gebin/e and on to Cracow; and thence rapidly bending 
northward again across Russia south of Moscow to Perm in latitude 
58° north, or nearly the same latitude as Duncansby Head, the 
north-east point of Scotland. The most southern point touched by 
this line would be Dresden, in latitude 51° -T north. Professor 
Newton says, “ it seems in North Germany to be only an accidental 
visitor to the right of the Kibe, and there is no trace of it further 
to the eastward than Western Pomerania, where it has been once 
met with.” On the Asiatic side of the Ural its range appears to 
extend further northward than in Europe, and Otto Finsch in his 
recent journey down the Ob (see ‘'Ibis,” January, 1877, p. 57) saw 
the last Pratincola rubicola near the last Russian village south of 
Obdorsk, where the Ob enters the gulf of that name, just south of 
the Arctic circle. 
As it is thus shewn that in Europe the stonechat is not a nor- 
thern bird migrating and breeding north of the Elbe, whence come 
those stonechats which appear with such regularity in the early 
spring and late autumn in Heligoland ? and whero are they 
bound ? 
From the very peculiar distribution of this species in Europe, it 
is plain they are not moving northward in the spring, or coming 
from the north in the autumn. Either then the range of P. rubicola 
extends much farther to the north-east than it is supposed to do 
which we scarcely think is the case as it is highly improbable so 
well-known a species could hitherto have been overlooked by 
English and continental observers, or (and we think this latter the 
only feasible explanation) the particular line of migration followed 
is one across the regular route of birds moving north and south. 
The facts of the case as observed in Eastern England and 
Heligoland, all tend to support the hypothesis of the migration 
of P. rubicola from west to east in the autumn and in the oppo- 
site direction in the spring. 
Mr. IUake Knox writing from the county Dublin (Zool. 1866, 
p. 222), has noticed that the numbers of stonechats are augmented 
in the autumn. These are probably birds collecting for migration, 
exactly as they do on our own eastern coast. The Irish stonechats 
will cross to England, and along with numbers of our own birds 
