HA RLE— HA RP V 407 



reference to the trilling sound of its musical notes. The name is 

 current in Orkney ; but with it must be noticed 



HARLE, the name given, both there and in Shetland, to one of 

 the Mergansers, and probably cognate if not identical with the 

 French Harle or Herle (Belon, Hist. Oys. p. 164) which has the same 

 meaning, though how a French word should reach and come into 

 use among a Scandinavian population is not easily explained, except 

 on the supposition that Harle is a contracted form of Hdvelle (as 

 above), and the name has been transferred from one species to 

 another. 



HARLEQUIN (with the suffix) DUCK was Forster's rendering 

 in 1791 {Cat. Anim. M. Am. p. 16) of Anas histrionica of Linnseus, 

 and since maintained as the common English name of that beauti- 

 ful species, which inhabits the northern part of the Holarctic Region 

 from Iceland westward to some undetermined limit in Siberia ; but 

 is unknown, except as a rare wanderer, to the British Islands or 

 Continental Europe. It belongs to the subfamily Fttligulinse 

 (Pochard), and has been often placed in the genus Clangula 

 (Golden-eye), from which, however, it differs sufficiently to deserve 

 separation as Cosmonetta or Histrionicus. The epithet Harlequin has 

 been applied by Gould to one of the Australian Bronze-wing 

 Pigeons, Pimps histrionica, and by Gurney to an African Quail, 

 Coturnix delegorguii. 



HARPY, a large diurnal Bird-of-Prey, so named after the 

 mythological monster of the classical poets, ^ — the Thrasaetus harpyia 

 of modern ornithologists, — an inhabitant of the Avarmer parts of 

 America from Southern Mexico to Brazil. Though known for 

 more than two centuries, its habits have come very little under the 

 notice of naturalists, and what is said of them by the older writers 

 must be received with some suspicion. A cursory inspection of the 

 bird, which is not unfrequently brought alive to Europe, its size, 

 and its enormous bill and talons, at once suggest the vast powers of 

 destruction imputed to it, and are enough to account for the stories 

 told of its ravages on mammals, — sloths, fawns, peccaries, and 

 spider-monkeys. It has even been asserted to attack the human 

 race. How much of this is fabulous there seems no means at 

 present of determining, but some of the statements are made by 

 veracious travellers — D'Orbigny and Tschudi. It is not uncommon 

 in the forests of the isthmus of Panama, and Mr. Salvin says {Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 368) that its flight is slow and heavy. Indeed 

 its Owl-like visage, its short wings and soft plumage, do not indicate 

 a bird of very active habits, but the weapons of offence with which, 



^ But the a/jTTTj or Jiaiya of then* prose-writers seems to have been the 

 Lammergeyee. 



