Mr. J. H. Gurney on a New Species of Hawk from China. 447 



upon it here, but simply make a few observations upon the nest 

 and eggs, as I see Mr. Gould has had no opportunity of doing 

 so, not having been able to procure the eggs. Although I have 

 myself frequently found the nests of these birds, yet the diffi- 

 culty of getting at them has made the eggs comparatively rare 

 in collections. The nests are easily found ; for, indeed, they are 

 large and conspicuous. They are often three feet high, and con- 

 sist of a mass of sticks piled up between the forks of the top- 

 most branches of the larger Eucalypti, or placed at the end of a 

 leaning bough. The lower part of the nest is made of thick 

 sticks, smaller ones being used for the top, and the whole lined 

 with twigs and grass. The first eggs I saw were taken in August 

 1860, and were given to me by Mr. James Ramsay, at Carding- 

 ton, a station on the Bell River, near Molong. They were taken 

 from a nest which Mr. Ramsay had found, by a black boy who 

 stepped the tree. The nest, he states, was placed upon a fork 

 near the end of one of the main branches of a large box-tree 

 {Eucalyptus, sp. ?). It was fully seventy feet from the ground, 

 and no easy task to get at it. This nest was about 3^ feet high, 

 by 4 or 5 broad, and about 1^ foot deep, lined with tufts of 

 grass and with down and feathers plucked from the breasts of 

 the birds, upon which the eggs were placed. The eggs are two 

 in number, nearly round, and very thick and rough in the shell. 

 One egg is 3 inches long by 2f broad, the ground-colour white, 

 thickly blotched and minutely freckled with rust-red, light yel- 

 lowish brown, and obsolete spots of a lilac tint. The other egg 

 is nearly all white, having only a few blotches of light yellowish 

 brown, and some fine dots of light rust-red; it is 2^ inches in 

 length by 2^ in breadth. 



XXXVII. — On Accipiter stevensoni, a New Species of Hawk 

 from China. By J. H. Gurney, M.P., F.Z.S., &c. 



(Plate XI.) 



In introducing to the readers of 'The Ibis' a Chinese Sparrow- 

 hawk which I believe to have been hitherto undescribed, and in 

 now describing this species from specimens in the Norwich 

 Museum, I have taken the opportunity of designating it by the 



