134 LIST OF DiUKNAL BIRDS OF PRKT. 



APPENDIX E. 



On the Species of the Genus Buteo/oMWC? in Asia. 



Mr. Sharpe cites Buteo leucocephalus of Hodgson and 

 B. aquilinus, also of Hodgson, as synonyms of B. ferox ; but 

 the bird described by Hodgson under the first of these names 

 in the P. Z. S. for 1845, p. 37, which was "caught beyond 

 the snows of Thibet/^ appears to me to belong, without doubt, 

 to the same species as that for which Temmiuck and Schlegel 

 proposed the specific name of hemilasius, founded on a 

 Japanese specimen, in 1850 {vide ^ Fauna Japonica,^ Aves, 

 p. 18, pi. 7). I therefore now adopt " leiicocephaJus" as the 

 oldest specific name of this Buzzard, instead of that o£ hemi- 

 lasius employed in my Notes. 



Hodgson applied the specific name of aquilinus to the same 

 species subsequently to that of leucocephalus \ and called it 

 "Buteo leucocephalus vel aquilinus," in a paper "On the 

 Buzzards of the Himalaya and Thibet/^ published in the 

 ' Calcutta Journal of Natural History,^ vol. viii. p. 94, where 

 he again alludes to it as brought " from Thibet.^^ This loca- 

 lity was that o£ the type specimen of Hodgson's B. leucoce- 

 phalus, but not of the type of his B. aquilinus, which latter, 



' Mr. Hume wi-ites to the following effect in 'Stray Feathers,' vol. iv. 

 p. 359 (footnote) : — " It is impossible to say whether aquilinus, or Hodg- 

 son's other name leucocejihalus, should stand ; the latter was read at the 

 Zoological Society on the 8th April, 1845, but when the record of this 

 reading was published I cannot ascertain : aquilinus appeared in the 

 J. A. S. B. for 1st April, 1845, but when this actually appeared is doubt- 

 ful; the numbers were often months in arrear." The species was, how- 

 ever, noticed, under the title of " Butaquila leucocephala," in the list of 

 Nipalese Birds collected by Mr. Hodgson, at p. 81 of the volume for 1844 

 of J. E. Gray's 'Zoological Miscellany;' and although no description of 

 the bird is there given, I think the fact of its record in 1844 under the 

 specific title of '' kucocephala^'' points to that being its older and original 

 designation. 



