inhabit Madeira and the
Canary Islands, and the Azorean bullfinch, which is peculiar to the islands
we are considering.

_Origin of the Azorean Bird-fauna._--The questions we have now before us
are--how did these eighteen species of birds first reach the Azores, and
how are we to explain the presence of a single peculiar species while all
the rest are identical with European birds? In order to answer them, let us
first see what stragglers now actually visit the Azores from the nearest
continents. The four species given in Mr. Godman's list are the kestrel,
the oriole, the snow-bunting, and the hoopoe; but he also tells us that
there are certainly others, and adds: "Scarcely a storm occurs in spring or
autumn without bringing one or more species foreign to the islands; and I
have frequently been told that swallows, larks, grebes, and other species
not referred to here, are not uncommonly seen at those seasons of the
year."

We have, therefore, every reason to believe that the birds which are now
residents originated as stragglers, which occasionally found a haven in
these remote islands when driven out to sea by storms. Some of them, no
doubt, still often arrive from the continent, but these cannot easily be
distinguished as new arrivals among those which are permanent inhabitants.
Many facts mentioned by Mr. Godman show that this is the case. A barn-owl,
much exhausted, flew on board a whaling-ship when 500 miles S.W. of the
Azores; and even if it had come from {251} Madeira it must have travelled
quite as far as from Portugal to the islands. Mr. Godman also shot a single
specimen of the wheatear in Flores after a strong gale of wind, and as no
one on the island knew the bird, it was almost certainly a recent arrival.
Subsequently a few were found breeding in the old crater of Corvo, a small
adjacent island; and as the species is not found in any other island of the
group, we may infer that this bird is a recent immigrant in process of
establishing itself.

Another fact which is almost conclusive in favour of the bird-population
having arrived as stragglers is, that they are most abundant in the islands
nearest to Europe and Africa. The Azores consist of three divisions--an
eastern, consisting of two islands, St. Michael's and St. Mary's; a central
of five, Terceira, Graciosa, St. George's, Pico, and Fayal; and a western
of two, Flores and Corvo. Now had the whole group once been united to the
continent, or even forme