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



Harriers^ as some of my remarks will be more or less appli- 

 cable to all the three species wliich occur in this country ; I 

 will therefore, in the first instance, refer to C. cyaneus — in re- 

 gard to which I think that Japan should be added to the lo- 

 calities given by Mr. Sharpe, as there are two females from 

 that country preserved in the museum at Leyden, which, 

 when I examined them in 18G9, appeared to me to be re- 

 ferable to this species ; it is, however, right to add that 

 Professor Schlegel, in the 'Museum des Pays-Bas,^ Circi 

 (p. 2), quotes these specimens as examples of Circus hud- 



somcus 



^ 



In the three British Harriers, the coloui' of the iris in the 

 adult birds is always a clear yellow in the males, and usually 

 a yellowish brown in the females ; but it would seem that in 

 the latter, as they become aged, the coloiu' of the iris ap- 

 proaches nearer to that of the male bird, and that this is es- 

 pecially the case in Montagu's Harrier t, in which species the 

 females appear also occasionally to assume, more or less com- 

 pletely, the grey plumage which always distinguishes the 

 adult males. Mr, Sharpe has an important footnote attached 

 to his article on this species {vide p. 66), from which it would 

 seem that he has examined " grey-plumaged " specimens of 

 this Harrier which, as indicated by their measurements, must, 

 in all probability, have been female birds; and Mr. E. H. 

 Rodd has recorded in the ' Zoologist ' for 1852, at p. 3475, a 

 Montagu's Harrier, obtained in April of that year on the 



* In the same passage Professor Sclilegel mentions two supposed spe- 

 cimens of C. hudmnicus from the Philippines which are preserved in the 

 Leyden Museum. These are in reality immature examples of C. melano- 

 leucus. I have already alluded to this circumstance in ' The Ibis ' for 1870 

 (p. 445), and should not have again referred to it had not the original 

 error been recently reproduced in Messrs. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway's 

 valuable ' History of North-American Birds ' (vol. iii. p. 218). 



t Mr. Sharpe is of opinion that this species is entitled to bear the spe- 

 cific name pygargris, for reasons which he gives in a footnote at p. 64 of 

 his Catalogue. In his synonymy of this species Mr. Shai^pe omits to 

 mention that the specific name oi cmeraceus was used by Montagu in 1802 

 ( vide Orn. Diet. i. sheet F), as quoted by Professor Newton in his edition 

 of ' Yarrell's British Birds ' (i. p. 138). 



