6 



that the naked skin about the head is frequently diseased in old 

 individuals. I have often observed this part of the bird, as well 

 as the tarsi, to be covered with warts and excrescences ; several 

 specimens that I dissected had the lymphatic glands of the neck 

 much enlarged ; one had an exostosis of the posterior extremity 

 of the crest of the sternum, and another a disease of the liver 

 resembling the commencement of cirrhosis. 



Polyhorus vulgaris. I saw two pairs of Caracara Eagles, one 

 at Indian River on the 15th of March, and the other at Enter- 

 prise on the 20 til of April. The pair at Indian River were 

 attracted to the place by the offal of the animals slaughtered for 

 the troops stationed there ; they were frightened away by the dis- 

 charge of a gun, and did not to my knowledge return again. The 

 pair at Enterprise, when first seen, were perched on a tree not a 

 hundred yards from the house, in company with a number of 

 Turkey Buzzards. During an hour that I watched them they 

 remained in the same place, occasionally opening their wings, but 

 otherwise motionless, though the buzzards were continually flying 

 to and from an alligator dead on the edge of the lake. They did 

 not seem at all wild, and were apparently on perfectly good terms 

 with the buzzards, not assuming any superiority over them, and 

 allowino; them to alight on the same branch with themselves. On 

 shooting one of them, which proved to be a male, the other flew 

 off and did not return till the following day, when it was also 

 shot ; this was a female. The male appeared to be in perfectly 

 adult plumage ; the female had just commenced changing the 

 plumage of the young bird for that of the adult, showing merely 

 a few scattered feathers of the adult livery. The ovaries of the 

 female showed that she had laid eggs that season. The crops of 

 both birds were empty, and the stomachs filled with a pultaceous 

 mass of putrid animal matter. On comparing them with three 

 South American specimens, I find that the number of the trans- 

 verse scales of the tarsi and feet vary in a most remarkable man- 

 ner in the different specimens. One of the South American 

 specimens has the whole front of one tarsus covered with trans- 

 verse scales, fourteen in number, while there are only seven on 

 the other ; these are however separated in two places by hex- 

 agonal scales, so that some of the transverse scales are near the 

 head of the tarsus. In a second specimen there are six on one 



