304 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



of incubation the male is continually found sitting on a low branch in the 

 vicinity of the nest, but does not appear to take any part in the process of 

 incubation. The Quail cannot be kept in cages for any time, as from its 

 impatient habit of running to and fro before the bars or wires, it soon becomes 

 totally blind. I have, however, kept them for several years in a room or 

 large aviary closed for about three feet at the bottom, where they have laid, 

 but never hatched. 



In 1826, or about that time, the late Mr. Laing turned out at Keith Hall, in 

 the St. Catharine Hills, several of the Freuch or Red Legged Partridges ; none, 

 however, have been since met with. 



APPENDIX. 



249. Falco anatum. Several individuals of a Falcon have appeared about 

 Salt Ponds this winter, 1862 1863, and also in the parish of St. Elizabeth, I have 

 in my possession a living specimen taken at Goshen, near Port Henderson, 

 in this parish, (not St. Ann's). It swooped on a large Cochin-China hen in a 

 cottage yard on that property, and got entangled with the hen, which was too 

 heavy for the hawk to lift, and in the struggle it was captured by the owner 

 of the fowl. It appears to be a male ; the dimensions are, length 16J inches, 

 expanse 40, flexure 13t ; iris dark-hazel with black pupil, core yellow. The bill 

 is small and weak, and leaden-blue, with a broad stripe of yellow covering the 

 nostrils, frontal band narrow, white ; head sepia brown spotted with black ; a 

 patch of black on the cheek extending over the eye, the rest of the cheek and 

 throat white with a few black dots ; breast white, clouded with reddish 

 blotches ; upper plumage reddish and slaty brown, each feather with greyish 

 or rusty white edges ; the entire under plumage white, with transverse and 

 diagonal bands of slaty-black ; legs and feet slender and yellow, claws black. 

 Inner webs of wing quills barred with white ; tail feathers barred with ashy 

 and tipped with white ; third wing quill longest.* 



Notes on the MIMIDJE of Jamaica. 

 BY RICHARD HILL. 



(Communicated by the Smithsonian Institution.) 



Mraus orpheus. Linnseus, when he described in the list of his Thrushes 

 the Turdus polyglottus, and the Turdus orpheus, and referred to Sloane's 

 Jamaica for one, under the name of the Mocking Bird, and to Brown's 

 Jamaica for the other, with no distinctive name, was noting the two re- 

 markable Mim idee of our late naturalists, birds very different in song and very 

 different in plumage, and yet commonly spoken of as very indistinctly dis- 

 tinguishable by those who, satisfied by " the bird in the bush," have never 

 troubled themselves to examine " the bird in the hand, " Linnaeus, with his 

 peculiar descriptive brevity, marks their character. 



Turdus polyglottus. 7. T. obscure cinereus, snbtus pallide cinereus, macula 

 alarum albida. Eximia voce cantillat et cantu instruitur. 



Turdus orpheus. 8. T. dorso fusco, pectore rectricibusque lateralibus al- 

 bidis, alis fascia alba. Cauda longa rotundata. Rectrices extimae alba?. 

 E terra elevatus cantilena spectatorem rapit in sui admirationem. 



I feel quite satisfied, therefore, that the common mocking bird of Jamaica 

 should be called Mimus polyglottus, and not orpheus, as given by Sclater and 

 others, and that the name of M. orpheus belongs to the larger darker species 



* This specimen has lately been sent by Mr. March to the Smithsonian Institution. Though of 

 smaller size than usual in the United States, it appears to be the same with our Duck Hawk, 

 F. anatum, although the dark -cheek stripe is rather more distinctly defined than usual. (8. F. 

 Baird). 



[Nov 



