530 Bulletin of the Brllish 



XXXllL— Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. 



Nos. LXX.-LXXII. 



No. LXX. (March 31st, IDOO). 



The sixty-ninth Meeting of the Club was held at the 

 Restaurant Frascati, 32 Oxford Street, on Wednesday, the 

 21st of March, 1900. Chairman : P. L. Sclater, F.R.S. 

 Thirty Members and five guests were present. 



The Hon. Walter Rothschild exhibited an adult speci- 

 men of the so-called Aquila fulvescens, shot l)y Herr Fiihrer 

 in Albania, together with a young bird obtained about the 

 same time and place. For comparison he placed on the table 

 adult and young birds of the Great Spotted Eagle {Aqaila 

 maculata) and the Small Spotted Eagle [Aquila pomurina], 

 and made the following remarks: — ''The name Aquila ful- 

 vescens has hitherto been bestowed on Indian specimens, and 

 this form has, up to the present time, been admitted by British 

 ornithologists to be a well-marked and distinct species. The 

 late Eugen von Ilomeyer described a European example 

 under the name of Aquila boecki, and since then, including 

 the one exhibited to-night, three more examples have been 

 recorded from Europe. Mr. Hartert, Dr. Otto Reiser {in 

 litt.), and several other naturalists have more than once drawn 

 attention to the exactly similar proportions and external 

 characters existing between Aquila maculata and Aquila 

 fulvescens, the only difference being in the colour of the 

 plumage, and they have suggested that A. boecki might be a 

 more or less constant aberration of Aquila maculata. 



" I think that the young bird exhibited will convince most 

 ornithologists, as it has myself, that Aquila fulvescens is 

 really a parallel 'aberration' to the light forms of the Common 

 Buzzard, Buteo buteo, and that it is not a good species. 

 This young bird has the upper and under tail-coverts, as 

 well as the feathers of the leg and thigh, of the same pale 

 bufl" colour, and in these markings it resembles the adult 

 Aquila fulvescens ; while the rest of its plumage is identical 

 with typical young of Aquila maculata. A further proof is 



