Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/87

 latitude 71° beyond the forest limit. The red-wing winters in southern and western Europe and the British Islands.

The blue-backed thrush, or "field-fare" has a range somewhat similar with the above species; Asiatic individuals migrating in winter to Cashmere, Turkistan, and the northwestern portion of India. The missel-thrush breeds throughout central Europe, ranging eastward to the northwestern slopes of the Himalayas. In such a mild climate as Great Britain offers, he remains the year round, but the majority of individuals winter in southern Europe, Persia, and North Africa. The song-thrush is another palæarctic form, breeding eastward to the Yenisei Valley, and in Norway wandering beyond the Arctic Circle. He has a near relative inhabiting northern and western China, known as Père David's thrush, in honor of a good monk who devoted much time to the study of ornithology.

There are two spotted-breasted thrushes restricted each to a certain island, and found nowhere else: the Anjuan thrush, inhabiting one of the islands of the Comoro group, lying between Madagascar and the African coast; and the St. Thomas thrush, from the island of that name, in the Gulf of Guinea.

In the New World the nearctic, or North American region, possesses several species of spotted-breasted thrushes breeding throughout its forest area. Notable among these are the wood-thrush, whose mellow, rippling music we know and love so well; the hermit, the olive-backed, the gray-cheeked, and tawny thrushes—spring and fall migrants passing through our woods in May and October.

In contrast to the spotted-breasted species, there are a number of thrushes, and among them the robin, which are solidly colored underneath, a few spots being confined to the throat. This difference in color-pattern has undoubtedly arisen far back in the history of the group from some environing influence. The young of these solid-colored thrushes are all spotted like the rest, and, since the young of all animals tend to revert toward ancestral forms and conditions, the spotted-breasted species may be looked upon as representing the more primitive type of thrush. A further proof of this is found in the two spotted-breasted thrushes inhabiting the islands above