But migration on the coast is by no means confined to the birds that habitually reside upon it. All the migratory species that dwell in inland districts must pass the coast on their annual journeys in spring and autumn. At these seasons, in suitable districts (of which we have already indicated the most favourable for observation), birds may be watched day after day, and week after week, entering our area to render summer glad with their cheerful presence, passing along our shores to yet more distant destinations, or departing in autumn for warmer lands and sunnier skies. Many of these birds, of course, enter our islands during the night, and thus escape observation; many others, it may be, pass to inland haunts by day, but without alighting upon the coast at all, flying at altitudes which render their identification, or even detection, impossible; but then there are many more, and especially in autumn, when the flight is generally far more leisurely than in spring, which crowd upon the coasts, or pass along them, within easy view of the most casual scrutiny. It may here, perhaps, be advisable to allude to the general order in which migrants usually appear upon the coast. Of course, it is utterly impossible, within the narrow limits of the present chapter, to enter very minutely into the many and intricate phenomena connected with the migration of birds. The reader anxious for further and more detailed information on this very interesting subject, may be referred to the present writer’s works upon Migration, and to that on the birds of Heligoland, by Herr Gätke.[8] Now, as regards the actual order of appearance. In spring, the observer will almost invariably find that the adult males are in the van; the females are the next to arrive, whilst the young of the preceding summer, and the more or less weakly individuals, bring up the rear. Many of these young and sickly birds pass the summer far south of the usual breeding-grounds; so that it is by no means an uncommon thing to find individuals of certain Arctic-nesting species, frequenting the British coasts throughout that season. The presence in our area of these northern birds during summer, has not unnaturally led to the supposition that they actually breed there. In autumn the order of migration is, to some extent, reversed. At that season a few old birds of either sex are the first to arrive, sometimes preceding, and always invariably accompanying, the flights of young birds, which are then moving south. Many of these young birds start off from their birth-place almost as soon as their wings are strong enough to bear them, and individuals of certain Arctic species have been met with on our coasts with particles of the down of their nestling plumage still adhering to their feathers. The adult males come south next; the females following; and last of all come the cripples and the weakly—the individuals that have been retarded in their flight by