J50 Mr. J. H. Gurney's Notes on 



it would seem that in very old birds they may not impossibly 

 become wholly white, as in C. cinerascens ; so that this dis- 

 tinction is probably not one to be implicitly relied on. 



Under the head Circa'etus cinereiis Mr. Sharpe unites the 

 greyish brown bird"^ described by Vieillot under that name, 

 the dark chocolate-brown one to which Riippell gave the 

 specific name oifunereus, and the white-bellied form which 

 was cdWedi pectoralis by Smith, and subsequently thoracicus 

 by Lesson. 



Assuming this view to be correct, and postponing for the 

 moment the question as to whether it is so or not, I would 

 here remark that I think Mr. Sharpe is hardly accurate in 

 giving as the habitat of the species " the whole of Africa, 

 e)?:cepting the forest-region on the west coast," as I am not 

 aware of an instance of this bird, in any of the phases which 

 he includes under the head of C. cinereus, having been ob- 

 tained to the north of the tropic of Cancer. 



On the subject of the differences of plumage above alluded 

 to, Mr. Sharpe makes the following remarks at p. 45 of his 

 edition of Layard's ' Birds of South Africa: ' — " It should be 

 noted that the adult form of this Harrier-Eagle, with the 

 black breast-baud and white under surface, has not yet been 

 met with north of the equator, and it is considered by some 

 ornithologists that two species are confounded under the 

 name of C. cinereus.''' 



It seems, however, from the testimony of Schlegel and 

 Von Heuglin, and also of Riippell, that the white-bellied bird 

 does in reality occur to the north of the equator. Professor 

 Schlegel, who maintains that C. pectoralis is specifically dis- 

 tinct from C. cinereus, and that the latter is identical with 

 C. funereus, mentions a specimen of C. iiectoralis in the 

 Leyden Museum, under its synonym of thoracicus, in the 

 following terms — "^Adulte, Senegal, obtenu de Mr. Frank, 

 1859 " {vide ' Museum d'histoire Naturelle des Pays-Bas,* 



* I know uot wlietlier Vieillot's type specimen is still in existence ; but, 

 from a comparison of the two descriptions and figures, it would seem to 

 have been a decidedly greyer bird than the type of Riippell's C. fi/nerpu/^. 



