472 PERNIS APIVORUS. 



James Wilson mentioned to me that an individual had 

 been procured by Mr Selby, and engaged to furnish me 

 with a note of particulars, which he soon after did in 

 the form of an extract from a letter of the celebrated 

 Northumbrian ornithologist. *' The bird was first no- 

 ticed by an acquaintance staying with us, and was ob- 

 served to rise from beneath a tree, where it had partly 

 scratched out the contents of a wasp's nest. This in- 

 duced us to set a couple of traps baited with a comb 

 of a wasp's nest taken a few evenings before, and in 

 the course of the following day the bird was found 

 caught by the leg. It proved a male, and an adult 

 bird, as I judged from the plumage and the pure yel- 

 low of the cere and legs. Its colour is uniform deep 

 clove brown, very unlike that of the females I have 

 met with in collections, or of the young males, which 

 have the whole of the head and neck nearly white. 

 Its stomach was filled with wasps, both full grown and 

 in the grub and nymph state. No other animal re- 

 mains were visible. Length from bill to tip of tail up- 

 wards of 21 inches." Mr Wilson adds, " I think I told 

 you that in my early days, when in the habit of passing 

 into Westmoreland, through the town of Penrith, I 

 saw there, in the possession of one John Graham, who 

 kept a museum, several specimens of honey buzzards. 

 I remember three distinctly, and Graham spoke of others 

 which he had stuff'ed and disposed of. They were all 

 shot in Cumberland by Lord Lonsdale's keepers, and 

 more than one of them in the immediate vicinity of 

 some bee-hives, where they had no doubt been preying 

 upon these industrious insects. From this habit I pre- 

 sume they have obtained their name, although the ho- 

 ney itself is certainly not their object." 



