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



the Australian Department of the Great Exhibition of 1861, 

 and which, I understood at the time, was intended to be 

 returned to Australia at the close of the Exhibition. Whether 

 this was done I know not; but Mr. E. P. Ramsay, in his 

 Catalogue of Australian Accipitres in the Museum at Sydney, 

 states " this is the only Australian species " not represented 

 in that collection. 



The example in the British Museum is from the interior 

 of Queensland, which should therefore be added to the loca- 

 lities quoted for this species in Mr. Sharpe's volume. 



The position of the genus Haliastur, to which I propose 

 next to refer, was well described by the late Dr. Jerdon in 

 the following remarks on the species inhabiting India, which 

 will be found at p. 102 of the first volume of his work on 

 the birds of that country : — It may be considered either an 

 aberrant form of Haliaetus leading to the Kites, or an aber- 

 rant Kite leading to the Sea-Eagles ; and its small size and 

 near affinities to Milvus have decided me to class it with the 

 Kites.'' 



The genus Haliastur comprises two species, H. indiis and 

 H. sphenurus ; but the first of these, which ranges from Cash- 

 mere and China northwards, to as far southwards as Australia, 

 comprises three geographical races or subspecies, the northern 

 and north-western, the typical H. inclus, in which the white 

 portions of the plumage in the adult bird, i. e. the head, neck, 

 breast, and interscapular region, have conspicuous dark shaft- 

 marks on the feathers ; the south-eastern, H. girrenera, in 

 which these shaft-marks are most frequently entirely absent ; 

 and the race inhabiting various intervening localities, in which 

 they are present, but are narrower, fainter, and frequently 

 fewer than in H. Indus ; the birds of this form have received 

 the specific appellation of H. intermedins , but vary much in 

 the different islands where they are found, some approaching 

 nearer to H. indus and others to 11. girrenera, these varia- 

 tions for the most part corresponding with the geographical 

 position of the localities which the birds inhabit. 



For further particulars as to these curious gradations and 

 variations of plumage, I would refer to the late Mr. Blyth's 



