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water-fowl, which are bred in the north, on their southward mi- 

 gration, though it would appear that the Ptarmigan forms the 

 chief sustenance of the old birds. At the same time it must not 

 be supposed that in Greenland the white race only is found — but 

 of this more presently ; and, on the other hand, there is reason to 

 believe that the Greenland Falcon may also breed in some of the 

 northern parts of the fur- countries. The nest spoken of by Sir 

 John Richardson as seen by him at Point Lake (lat. 65° 30' N., 

 long. 113° W.), the birds of which "bore considerable resem- 

 blance to the Snowy Owl" (Fauna Bor.-Am. ii. p. 28), probably 

 belonged to this form. But whether its character in Siberia is 

 that of native or a visitor only, is not so easy to say with the 

 amount of evidence before us. A specimen obtained by Pallas 

 is still preserved in the Museum at Berlin ; but, according to the 

 views here adopted, it is a bird of the year only ; and that being 

 the case, the question of its origin is left as entirely undetermined 

 as with examples of similar age which appear in our own islands. 

 Von Middendorff says that the large Falcons observed by him 

 even as high as 75° 30' N. were always in dark plumage (Sib. 

 Reise, ii. 2. p. 127) : but the single specimen from the Amoor 

 river, described by von Schrenck (Reisen und Forschungen, 

 i. p. 228), seems to have belonged to the Greenland race; and 

 though we cannot entirely comprehend from the account given 

 whether it was an adult or an immature bird, we incline to the 

 belief that it was the latter. 



We have said that the Greenland Falcon is not the only race 

 which is to be found in that country. Among the birds received 

 thence (we may mention those, for instance, sent at different 

 times by the late Governor Holboll*) there have been many which 



* We do not know whether this unfortunate gentleman ever pubhshed a 

 description of what, judging from the tickets appended to the specimens 

 dispersed through his means, he so long ago at least as 1854 termed Falco 

 arcticus. It is therefore only with hesitation that we state our belief that 

 he considered the birds marked with transverse bars — i. e. the adults of 

 both forms, which we have here spoken of as the Greenland and Iceland 

 Falcons — to constitute one species, to which he applied the name F. arcti- 

 cus ; and the birds with longitudinal streaks — i. e. the immature of the same 

 — to form another, which he deemed to be F. islandicus. If our supposition 

 be correct, it exhibits another phase of this curiously confused question ; 



