MIGRATION IN HELIGOLAND. 
3 
who is compelled to find his vus in urbe has a right to complain 
when public duties so largely affecting his enjoyment are badly 
performed or conspicuously neglected ; and there is no French 
provincial town which would not feel itself disgraced, were its 
public gardens to present the appearance of some of those under 
the management of the London County Council. 
The Editor. 
MIGRATION AS OBSERVED IN HELIGOLAND. 
trULTj R. GATKE’s ornithological observations during fifty 
ICMm 3 years give the most interesting results in information 
to the direction taken by birds in their migration 
' flights, and facts relating to the altitude and velocity 
of these flights. The chapter on the “ Course of Migration,” 
with which we have already dealt,* is followed by one on the 
“ Direction of the Migration Flight.” The author reminds us 
that the regions of Central, Northern and Eastern Asia, com- 
prising vast tracts of uncultivated country, stretching away to 
Kamskhatka and the Sea of Ochotsk, are the breeding places of 
the world. The migratory flocks as observed in Heligoland are 
infinitely greater in autumn than in spring ; this is accounted for 
by the fact that many birds fly direct frorn their winter quarters 
to their nesting places, and in autumn, the tendency is to fly 
westwards, striking south later. A glance at the map will show 
what is explained in the book by a diagram, viz., that in autumn 
the birds from Southern Siberia fly westwards, passing over 
Asia and part of Europe before reaching Heligoland, England, or 
Ireland, and then they strike south for North Africa. In spring, 
a spirit of restless haste possesses these travellers, and they fly 
direct for Siberia (literally as the crow flies), leaving the British 
Isles and Heligoland to the north. By some this journey is 
accomplished in one flight. Richard’s pipit is often seen in Heli- 
goland in autumn, but seldom in spring, only when some birds 
have wintered in England or Ireland. The home of this bird 
is more remote than that of any other. It crosses great rivers 
in its flight from distant Daiiria to Western Europe, thus 
demolishing the theory that birds follow the courses of rivers 
As regards the altitude attained in the migration flights, j\Ir. 
Gatke confesses that in the case of a great number of birds, the 
elevation is too great to be within the power of human obser- 
vation. It is proved that birds can live at a height at which 
neither man nor other warm-blooded creature can sustain life 
See Nature Notes for September, pp. 166-170. 
