vagrant birds from across the Atlantic appeared in Great Britain and Ireland. The species involved included ones with normal distributions ranging from western Greenland and arctic Canada south to the eastern United States and Florida. Shorebirds and waterfowl, including six or seven species of North American waders, made up the bulk of the records as usual, but other groups were also involved, among them three purely American Passerines. In fact, the number and variety of the species made the autumn one of the most interesting on record for Nearctic birds. At the same time the main occurrences tended to group themselves into several more or less well-defined phases, largely in the second half of the period, from mid-September onwards; indeed, until then it had been an exceptionally poor time for American birds over here, with one or t w o Lesser Yellowlegs providing the only observations. These considerations made us think that it might be worth examining the records against the contemporary meteorological situation in eastern and arctic North America and over the North Atlantic Ocean. It is the purpose of this paper to set out our results while at the same time grouping the records together in one place for easy reference. This analysis was actually prepared in draft form at the beginning of 1959, but it was decided to delay publication until the observations had been passed by the Rarity Records Committee then in the process of formation. Most of the occurrences summarised below appeared 369in the first