towards India. In Europe it lias occurred as a straggler off
the coast of Sweden, an example having been taken in the
Baltic near Landsort, and it has been once killed, many
years ago, near Copenhagen. MM. Jaubert and Barthelemv-
Lapommeraye mention two specimens killed in the south of
France, and, on Dr. Cara’s authority, its occurrence in
Sardinia, which last fact is denied by Dr. Salvadori in his
new ‘ Fauna d’lta lia .’ From him however we learn that
it appears, though very rarely, in Italy. Mr. Howard
Saunders states that one example has been killed and
another observed in Spain. Loclie gives it as of occasional
occurrence in Algeria; hut it is not known to have been
met with elsewhere on the African continent.
The ordinary limit of the Bed-breasted Flycatcher’s northwestern
range is found in the island of Riigen and the coasts
of Mecklenburg and Pomerania; thence towards the southeast
it becomes more plentiful, though generally a local
species. In this direction it inhabits in summer Thuringia,
Franconia, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary and Turkey, while it
occasionally strays to Switzerland. Its limits to the northeast
cannot so well he traced ; but it seems to occur near St.
Petersburg and across Russia to the Caucasus, occupying,
one may presume, all the countries lying between this line
and that before indicated. Marquess Doria found it not
uncommon in spring near Teheran, and this observation
points out the route it takes from its winter-quarters in
Upper and Western India. On the opposite side of the
Indian peninsula it is said to be replaced by a nearly allied
species, generally referred to that named by Gmelin Musci-
cctpa leucura, and this bird, migrating probably in a northeasterly
direction, seems to have been mistaken for M.
parva by some of the Russian naturalists, who have thought
they had met with the latter in Eastern Asia even so far as
Kamtchatka. Be that as it may, there is no doubt of the
true M. parva being, as has been said, a winter-visitant to
North-western India.
The Red-breasted Flycatcher was originally discovered by
Bechstein in Thuringia, but it is worthy of note that modern
German ornithologists state that it has not been observed
for some years past in the locality where he first found it.
It arrives, say those who have observed its habits in Central
Europe, in May and departs in August, chiefly frequenting,
either singly or in small bands, the beech forests of the
more mountainous districts and their outskirts, but sometimes
also the smaller woods of the more level country. It
is described as a restless little bird, keeping always among
the tree-tops, perching on a dead twig and flitting through
the leafy shade in the pursuit of insects, so that, to any one
not well acquainted with it, it might pass for one of the
Willow-Wrens, to the call-notes of some of which its own
has a resemblance, though its song is said to be somewhat
like that of the Pied Flycatcher. Towards the end of May,
having paired, it begins to build. The nest is cup-shaped
and rather deep, small and neat, composed of moss and
wool, with a lining of hairs, and is placed either where a
rotten branch in falling off has left a hole, or between the
trunk of a tree and an obliquely ascending bough. The
eggs are from five to seven in number, french white, closely
mottled with fine streaks of pale rusty, sometimes so as
almost to hide the ground colour, and measure from '65 to
•61 by from -51 to '47 in. The young are hatched in June
and fed by their parents with small beetles, which are not
only caught in the air but sought for on the ground.
Von Nordmann in his ‘ Observations sur la Faune Pon-
tique’ (p. 198) remarks that this species breeds commonly
in the mountain region of Abasia, very probably in that of
Bessarabia and perhaps even near the steppes. The young
arrive in the botanic garden at Odessa towards the end of July,
and remain there until the end of October. At that time
they do not keep, like the adults as described in Germany, to
the tree-tops, but frequent the middle branches and often
come to the ground for food. Each bird has its own station,
and when two meet one is furiously pursued by the other
with piercing cries which he likens to the clicking noise of
small castanets. In the spring the adults in full plumage
stop only a short time in the gardens. The liveliness of their