BIRDS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT. [To TER EDITOR OP
THY " SPROTATOR:] SIR,—Allow me, as Chairman of the Migration Committee (not Council) of the British Association, to inform you that the investigation upon which the Committee has been en- gaged for sixteen years has not "cost little or nothing," as stated by the writer of an article in the Spectator of October 3rd.. I cannot now refer to the accounts of the Committee, but I believe the cost has amounted to some 2300, of which about one-half has been provided by private generosity ; but all that is now spent. The secretary of the Committee is Mr. John Cordeaux of Great Cotes House, Lincoln, R.S.O., and he, I am sure, would gladly receive any contributions that persons interested in the inquiry might make to the necessary ex- penses, towards which the Association has just accorded the Committee a further grant of £40, all we can depend upon at present. I may perhaps be permitted to add that the last Report of the Committee, to which is appended Mr.. Clarke's admirable " Digest" of the observations, is to be obtained at the office of the British Association, Burlington House, W., and I trust that the demand for it may be large, since so much nonsense has been written on the migration of birds that this plain statement of ascertained facts, free from theory or speculation of any kind, may serve to correct many misconceptions of the subject. —I am, Sir, &c.,
ALFRED NEWTON.
Magdalene College, Cambridge, October 3rd.
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