new American Raptorial Birds. 175 



The primaries and secondaries are black, with the excep- 

 tion of three broad transverse bars of grey, mottled with a 

 darker hue of the same, and browner in the older feathers than 

 in the new, and also excepting portions of the inner webs of 

 these feathers, which are white varied with dark grey ; the 

 tertials are similarly variegated on the inner webs, where, 

 however, the white portions occasionally assume the form of 

 imperfect transverse bars ; but the grey cross bars, which are 

 conspicuous on the primaries and secondaries^ are absent from 

 the tertials. 



The feathers of the upper tail-coverts are brownish black, 

 with inconspicuous white bases and tips, but are for the most 

 part also crossed by two white transverse bars, as in M. 

 ffuianensis. 



The tail is blackish brown, crossed by four bars of white, 

 mottled and tinged with brownish grey; the narrowest of 

 these bars is that next the tail-coverts ; and they successively 

 become broader as they approach the end of the tail, which 

 exhibits a very narrow white tip ; a fifth similar but con- 

 cealed bar exists near the base of the outer rectrices — the 

 number of pale bars coinciding with those of an immature, 

 but not very young, specimen of M. guianensis which I have 

 examined, but being one less than I find in a fully adult ex- 

 ample of that species. 



The feathers of the chin, instead of being pure white as in 

 M. (juianensis, are of a greyish white, with dark shaft-marks ; 

 and the plumage of the throat and upper breast is very much 

 darker than in that species, the feathers of the throat being 

 slaty black, with very narrow whitish tips, and the upper 

 breast being entirely black, except that some of the feathers 

 which are adjacent to the throat have very slight whitish 

 edgings so narrow as to be scarcely perceptible ; the lower 

 breast, abdomen, tibiae, and under tail-coverts are conspicu- 

 ously barred with transverse bands, alternately white and 

 black, the black being, for the most part, slightly broader 

 than the white, whereas in M. guianensis the white trans- 

 verse bands are considerably broader than the dark, and the 



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