fon OD WC ON:

ks, it may be here mentioned that young birds appear to wander further from their native homes
remarks, aly : 0 ; ‘

Gj - year ‘ir existence thi ‘y do afterwards, going out, as it were, to see the

during the first autumn or year of their existence than they c , going : ;

n : Soe n RS ee ape | Ss it is that th f a a

world before settling down for the proper business of their lives; hence, doubtless, , the € young of

wy of the rarer northern species (Eagles, Gulls, Divers, &c.) are found further to the south than the
SO Wc at : s &

old birds.

With respect to the autumnal departure of many kinds of our smaller migrants, it would appear that most,
if not all, of them assemble along our south coast ready for departure on the occurrence of a favourable wind.
Having once crossed the Channel to France or Portugal, their further southern journey becomes an easy
one, and is doubtless performed by short stages until they reach the shores of the Mediterranean, which in
the case of our own birds is probably crossed at the narrowest portion, viz. Gibraltar, or some other
promontory of Southern Spain, their destination being the coast of Morocco. On the other hand, those of
Central Europe migrate by the way of Sicily and Malta to Algeria, while those which have passed the
summer still further east proceed in a direct line to Kegypt. North and south, and vice versa, is in my
opinion their instinctive movement; and tbis natural impulse is so blindly followed that the Quail, when
migrating, will, if possible, fly through a house or over a mountain rather than turn aside from its course,
which would not be the case were reason its guide; in this respect it resembles the Norwegian Lemming,
whose onward course is stopped neither by lakes nor hills, and some species of ants, whose movements are

equally undeviating.

The British Islands and Europe generally, however, to which the foregoing remarks on migration almost
solely refer, are not the only portion of the globe subject to such interchanges of bird-life at different
seasons of the year; the avifauna of the great continent of Asia, a continent having the loftiest mountains,
the most elevated plateaux, and the richest forests in the world, exhibits similar phenomena. So, again, if we
cross the equator and take a view of what occurs in the southern hemisphere, we shall find that a precisely
analogous movement. takes place there, but of course at opposite seasons, the antipodean summer being
coincident with our winter. In many instances bird-life js there represented by species of a similar form to
those we find in our own country, and which evince a tendency to a movement north and south at certain
periods of the year as with us.

Although in the foregoing remarks I have used the terms migrant and migratory in their ordinary
acceptation, it will be as well before quitting the subject of migration to place before mny readers what I
consider should be the strict meaning of the word migrant. The country a bird resorts to for the propa-
gation of its species should be regarded as its true habitat: thus the Swallows and others, although they

ass only half the year j ees poor :
| j year in the British Islands, are really not migrants in the same sense of the term as that

in which we should so regard the Fieldf,
g reeRiela fare: wecveiintone ; i 1
QX eldfare and Redwing, who, although resident with us during the winter,