THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS:
A PAPER ADDRESSED to the LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS of the ENGLISH CHANNEL, and to the LOCAL ORNITHOLOGISTS of the COUNTIES ABUTTING THEREON.
By J.A. Harvie Brown,
Member of Committee of Migration of the British Association.
Between Varne Lighthouse in the east, and Start Lighthouse in the west, along the south coast of Great Britain, no returns have been received regarding the "Migration of Birds" by the British Association Committee on that subject, although schedules have been returned from all the other lighthouses of Great Britain and Ireland during nine years' endeavours of the Committee (1879 to 1887), and resulting in the Digest of the Reports of the Committee of these years, which latter took Mr. Eagle Clarke seven more years to work out, and which was presented by him to the Committee at the Liverpool Meeting of the British Association in 1896. The fault of this big blank in our annals does not lie with the appointed members of the Association's Committee. As a member of that Committee, I think the blank should be filled in. I therefore address this article, hoping that it will be circulated through them to the light-keepers of the south coast of England. It appears to me that such would be all the more important as an annex to Mr. Eagle Clarke's Digest, because the existing blank leaves a part of his deductions unsupported to the extent they should be; I mean his conclusions as to what he has termed in his Digest the east-to-west migration line.
It seems also, at the present time, specially desirable to obtain positive records from these stations, as we have good reason to believe that fresh series of observations will be before long undertaken at prominent stations outside our British limits, but upon the same east-to-west line. If these observations could be arranged for upon this south coast-line of England simultaneously
