The Blackcap, like the Nightingale, appears to migrate almost due north and south, and ranges from Lapland to the Cape. It is resident in Madeira, the Azores, and the Canaries, and is also found throughout the year in Northern Africa and Southern Italy. In the fine collection of African birds (_Passeres_ and _Picariæ_) belonging to Mr. R. B. Sharpe, I have seen a specimen of the Blackcap from Senegal. In Spain and Portugal it is found only on the migration in spring and autumn. Mr. Godman, in his interesting work on the “Natural History of the Azores,” has described a curious variety of the Blackcap which is found in these islands, “having the black marking on the head extending to the shoulders and round under the throat,” and he was informed that individuals were sometimes found with “the whole of the under parts of the body black.” This variety appears to have been met with also in Madeira, from whence it was described by Heineken (“Zool. Journ.,” v. p. 75). A figure of it will be found in Jardine and Selby’s “Illustrations of Ornithology,” pl. 94. However much observers may be deceived by song, there is no mistaking either sex of the Blackcap as soon as the bird comes in view. The black crown of the male and the brown crown of the female suffice to distinguish the species amongst every other of our summer migrants. There is something very peculiar, too, about the half-hopping, half-creeping motions of all the Fruit-eating Warblers, which distinguishes them at once from other small birds frequenting the same haunts. The males invariably arrive some days before the females; but both sexes seem to leave the country much about the same time—that is, early in September.