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



tunately the supposed adult specimens of M. migrans here 

 alluded to have been dispersed^ and I have only been able 

 to reexamine one of thera^ which was killed at Ondonga^ in 

 Ovampo-land, on 16th of December, and is now preserved in 

 the Norwich Museum. I now find that this example is not 

 in reality one of M. migrans, but is unquestionably a specimen 

 of M. agyptius, which had attained adult dress but had not 

 acquired the yellow bill, although the mandibles exhibit some 

 slight indication of the approaching change of tint. I have 

 no doubt that other examples of M. agyptius in Mr. Anders- 

 son^s collection were in a similar stage of coloration, and were 

 mistaken by me for specimens of M. migrans in which the 

 usual grey tint was absent from the head, as mentioned in 

 the extract quoted above from the ' Notes on the Birds of 

 Damara Laud ;^ and I strongly suspect that many other sup- 

 posed South- African examples of M. migrans, and especially 

 those said to have been found breeding on the banks of the 

 Caledcn River* ought to have been referred to this peculiar, 

 but not unusual, phase of M. (sgtjptius. 



At the present moment I know of but one South- African 

 example of the veritable M. migrans in any collection in this 

 country. This, which is a young male in change, was obtained 

 by Mr. Andersson at Ondonga on the 16th November, and is 

 now preserved in the Norwich Museum. 



In ' The Ibis ' for 1869, at p. 449, 1 mentioned, as examples 

 of M. migrans, a Kite obtained in Madagascar on the 8th 

 September 1862, and previously recorded in ' The Ibis ' for 

 1863, p. 337, which was presented by Mr. Edward Newton 

 to the Norwich Museum — and also a younger specimen 

 obtained at Pomony, on Johanna or Anjuan Island, in 

 the Comoro group, in November 1863, and which is pre- 

 served at Cambridge. I have recently reexamined these spe- 

 cimens, and believe them both to be, in reality, examples of 

 M. (sgyptius in which the bill has not yet assumed its yellow 

 colouring. If I mistake not, the claim of M. migrans to 

 admission into the fauna of Madagascar and of the Comoro 

 Islands rests upon these two examples (which are the two 

 * Vide Sharpe's editiou of Layard, p. 51. 



