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



which Mr. Sharpe appropriates (I venture to think^ errone- 

 ously) to the Steppe-Eagle, as to which question I would refer 

 to my remarks in ' The Ibis ' for 1873; p. 99. 



The most westerly locality assigned by Mr. Sharpe to the 

 Imperial Eagle is " Central Europe/' which I am disposed to 

 think is probably accurate, although Mr. Dresser remarks that 

 ''in Southern France, according to Jaubert and Barthelemy- 

 Lapommeraye, it has occurred several times ; and on referring 

 to the plate published by those gentlemen, there appears no 

 doubt that the species represented is the present, and not the 

 White-shouldered or Spanish Imperial Eagle." My copy of 

 the ' Richesses Ornithologiques du Midi de la France,' by the 

 authors whom Mr. Dresser quotes, does not contain a plate 

 of the Imperial Eagle ; and the description there given does 

 not appear to have been taken from a French specimen, only 

 one such adult example being mentioned by M. Jaubert and 

 his colleague, which was in a private collection at Bayonne, 

 and which they appear not to have personally examined ; I 

 therefore do not consider it by any means certain that this 

 species has really occurred in France, or that the French 

 specimens referred to it may not, in fact, have belonged to 

 Aquila adalberti, in which case the very few stragglers re- 

 corded in Mr. Dresser's work as having been obtained in 

 Pomerania and Silesia are probably the most western known 

 examples of the true Imperial Eagle. Mr. Sharpe does not 

 refer to the occurrence of the Imperial Eagle in North-eastern 

 Africa ; but a summary of what is known on this head will be 

 found in Mr. Dresser's article on this species. 



Mr. Dresser figures a fine adult pair of Imperial Eagles, 

 the female"^ of which, through the kindness of Mr. W. E. 



* Mr. Brooks has favoiu'ed me witli tlie following graphic account of 

 the capture of this specimen : — " It was rather a barren, open, sort of 

 country where I saw her perched on a low half-dead tree. I made two or 

 three attempts to get within shot ; but she always ducked her head and 

 flew before I was within a hundred j'ards. On the last occasion she began 

 to soar a little, and then took a steady flight to the west at a height of 

 about two hundred yards. I kept her in view with my glasses, and at last 

 saw her shoot to the ground with closed wings. As she knew a Euro- 

 pean so well, I handed my gun, loaded with BB, to my native attendant, 



