not obsei'ved in the British Isles.' 93 



To Mr. Gurney we believe the credit is due of discovering the 

 identity of the Buteo cirtensis of General Levaillant with ' le Ta- 

 chard ' of his older, and, among ornithologists, better known name- 

 sake, the great African traveller. It is true that Prince C. L. 

 Bonaparte (Cat. Ois. d'Eur. 1856) quotes the Algerian warrior^s 

 bird as identical with the many-named B. rufinus last noticed ; 

 but we are inclined to think Mr. Gurney has made out his case — 

 though whether the two specimens of the African Buzzard {B. 

 tachardus, Vieill.) in the Norwich Museum were really from the 

 Volga, is another question. Skins from the country drained by 

 that river, prepared, as they are principally, at the Moravian 

 settlement of Sarepta,can, it is said, be at once detected by a prac- 

 tised eye — though whether their peculiarities cannot be success- 

 fully imitated by clever and unprincipled dealers we know not, 

 but we fear it is possible. We before remarked of Aquila ncBvi- 

 oides, that its being a common species in North Africa renders 

 its occasional occurrence in Europe very likely. The same may 

 be said of this Buzzard, which is not only met with in the south- 

 ern portion of the continent, but also along its northern shore, 

 from the extreme limits of Morocco to Tunis. We do not there- 

 fore so much demur to our author's giving it a place in his work ; 

 but we should be inclined to consider it on probation only. The 

 fact however is, that, as has been observed by Mr. P. L. Sclater 

 (Proc. Linn. Soc, Zool. ii. p. 135), *^ Africa, north of the Atlas 

 along the southern shores of the Mediterranean, appears to belong 

 to Europe zoologically, and not to the continent with which it 

 is physically joined." We would indeed take exception to the 

 word " zoologically," for we believe the Algerian mammals and 

 reptiles * are entirely distinct from those of the opposite coast ; 

 but the ciS'Atlantean part of North Africa should unquestionably 

 be regarded as forming part of Europe ornithologically, and 

 we trust the day may not be distant when some philosophic 



belongs to Buteo rufinus; but a still older appellation is S. Gmelin's 

 Accipiter ferox, which we have called attention to above. — Ed.] 



* Dr. Giiuther, in his recent papers on the geographical distribution of 

 Reptiles and Batrachians, takes a different view from this, and confirms 

 the zoological division indicated in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 

 above quoted. See Proc. Zool. Soc. 1858, p. 377 et seq. — Ed. 



