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



bird thus alluded to by Mr. W. B. Barker in his work ou 

 Cilicia : — " The Peregrine of the cliffs of Mount Taurus is 

 smaller than the English Peregrine, but more beautifully 

 variegated in plumage; it is known as the 'Barbary Faleon^ '^*. 

 It seems probable that this Falcon also occurs in Persia, and 

 that a Persian specimen described by Mr. Blanford in his 

 ' Eastern Persia/ vol. ii. p. 102, under the title of F. barbarus is 

 a female of F. punicus. I have been indebted to the kindness 

 of Mr. Seebohm for the loan of two males collected by Mr. 

 G. C. Danford in Mount Taurus, to which I purpose to allude 

 more particularly later on ; and I may take this opportunity of 

 mentioning that, besides the specimens which have been lent 

 to me by Mr. Dresser and Mr. Seebohm, I have had equally 

 kind loans of skins of this Falcon from Lord Lilford, Mr. 

 Dalgleish, and Captain Wardlaw Ramsay, and of the allied 

 species from Canon Tristram and Captain Shelley. 



It is this northern subspecies of F. minor which, as it 

 appears to me, is figured by the younger Le Vaillant on pi. i. 

 of the 'Exploration de lAlgerie' under the title of Falco 

 punicus ; and this is the name which I think it ought to 

 have. 



Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Dresser, and other authorities have referred 

 this plate (but, I venture to think, erroneously) to F. barbarus, 

 and this was also the view of M. Loche, the autiior of the 

 ornithological letterpress to the ' Exploration de F Algerie ; ' 

 but it is evident from his remarks (at pp. 55 and 5'6 of that 

 work) that he had never examined the original specimen from 

 which Le Vaillant^s drawing and plate were taken. 



obtained a specimen shot late in the month of April ;" but as I have never 

 seen an Italian specimen, I feel that the identification of the Milan example . 

 with the subspecies now imder consideration must be left an open ques- 

 tion. Mr. Dresner possesses an immature Falcon obtained at Rhodes by 

 Mr. Danford, who has marked it as a female, and has cited this as also an 

 example of F. minor ; but it appears to me that this specimen, which Mr. 

 Dresser has kindly lent me, with others, is, if rightly sexed, proved by its 

 measurenients to be female of F. barbarus — an inference which is 

 strengthened by the appearance on the nape of the commenced assumption 

 of a nuchal collar. 



* Vide *■ Lares and Penates, p. 297. 



