68 BANGS — FLORIDA RED-TAILED HAWK bese 
Gmelin,’ which is wholly based on the ‘Cream Coloured Buz- 
zard”’ of Latham.” Latham describes a young hawk, that may 
have been a red-tailed hawk, and the specimen is said to have 
come from Jamaica. His description, however, would fit almost 
any other young hawk of about the same size quite as well, and 
the name ‘‘Cream Coloured Buzzard”’ hardly expresses the gen- 
eral coloration of the young of any of the races of Luteo borealis 
that I am acquainted with. 
I should not give the bird I now describe a name if in my 
opinion it were advisable to use Gmelin’s name for the red-tailed 
hawk of Jamaica, because, although the latter bird may prove to 
be a distinct island form, there is still a fair chance that the red- 
tailed hawks of South Florida, Cuba and Jamaica are all the same. 
I believe it a very bad plan, in selecting names for the finely 
drawn subspecies of today, to resurrect, wholly on geographic 
grounds, long-forgotten names that evidently were based on birds 
not in characteristic plumage. ‘The writings of the earlier orni- 
thologists teem with instances where they were wholly misled as 
to the origin of their specimens, and I cannot bear to see one of 
their obscure names dug up and attached to some new race of 
bird, unless there is something or other that is characteristic of 
the form to which it is applied, either in the diagnosis or descrip- 
tion, or in measurements. I, therefore, shall call the red-tailed 
hawk of South Florida, and undoubtedly of Cuba also, 
Buteo borealis umbrinus subsp. noy. 
Type, from Myakka, Manatee Co., Florida, 2 adult, no. 3314, coll. of E. A. 
and O. Bangs, collected in April, 1888, by O. Tollin. 
Characters.— Size and proportions as in Bteo borealis borealis ; color, above, 
darker; throat and middle of belly marked with broad, conspicuous striping 
and banding of deep chocolate-brown; tail-feathers with dark brown markings 
(the remains of bands) near the shafts. From ZB. dorealis calurus the new 
form differs in being less suffused with reddish below, and in different general 
tone of coloration. 
1 Gmelin, S. N., p. 266, 1789. 
2 Latham, Synopsis, I, 1, p. 49, No. 30. 
3 1 have compared this specimen with a very large number of specimens both of B. borealis 
borealis and of B. borealis calurus,and I cannot find one of either that approaches it. The 
differences are very evident on comparison, though hard to express in words. 
