122 ARCHIBUTEO LAGOPUS. 



Arctic Circle. I believe that his earnest desire to do justice to the public 

 by not withholding from them any circumstance that might appear to favour 

 their interests, here led him to do injustice to himself by exaggerating the 

 amount of recognition which the bird obtained in this case. Mr. W. H. 

 Simpson and I myself were with him on the occasion referred to. We were 

 descending the River Muonio in the beginning of September 1855, and came 

 upon a flock of about five-and-twenty or thirty Rough-legged Buzzards, which 

 were then on their autumnal migration. Among them was one of a deep- 

 brovsm colour all over. To this bird Mr. Wolley drew my attention, as being 

 the first Common Buzzard he had seen in Lapland ; and I examined it with 

 my telescope as carefully as I could. It was sitting on a tree by the river- 

 side, with several others, which were, to all appearance, undoubted Rough- 

 legged Buzzards. They all seemed on friendly tei'uis ; and when we distiu'bed 

 them, they took wing and continued in company. I could detect nothing in 

 its carriage or flight different from the rest, and so far Mr. Wolley agi-eed 

 with me. He also, if I remember right, admitted at the time the impro- 

 bability of a Common Buzzard being found in a flock of the other species. I 

 told him I thought it was only a very dark-pluniaged Rough-legged Buzzard, 

 and reminded him that among the many pau's of that bird's feet he had had 

 brought to hiuT, there were some of an almost deep chocolate-colour. I added 

 that this was the prevailing characteristic of the North-Auierican representa- 

 tive of oiu" Archihtdeo lagopus, and it seemed to me not at all unlikely that 

 the European form should occasionally exhibit a resemblance to the A. sancti- 

 johannis. To this he seemed to assent ; and I was therefore much sm-prised 

 when, some months after, I read the vmqualified statement in his ' Catalogue.' 

 Subsequently he told me he had come to think I was right, or, at any rate, 

 that he had used by far too strong an expression in saying that a Common 

 Buzzard had been ''recognized" in Lapland. This opinion is strengthened 

 by what Herr Wallengi-en says several times in his valuable series of papers 

 on the *' Breeding-zone of Scandinavian Birds," in the * Naumannia ;' but I 

 here need only cite the single assertion (vol. iv. p. 72) that the Common 

 Buzzard " never oversteps the Polar Circle." The statements made by Mr. 

 Wolley in his Sale Catalogues are so carefidly worded, that I know of but 

 veiy few cases in which they are not literally true ; these cases, of which the 

 present is one, I, however, feel it my duty to notice as I proceed. 



But supplying our collections with imdoubtedly genuine eggs of this species 

 was not the only service Mr. Wolley rendered to natural history concerning 

 it. I am not acquainted with any British author who has described the 

 changes of plumage in the Rough-legged Buzzard correctly, or who has 

 figured an adult bird. This can easily be explained by the fact that the ge- 

 nerality of the examples obtained in this coimtry are young birds in their 

 first dress. Until Mr. WoUey's spoils of 1853 were sent home, I did not 

 positively know what the mature plumage was like. It is true it had been 

 represented in some Continental works, among others, Naumann's excellent 

 ' Vogel Deutschlands ' (pi. xxxiv. fig. 1) ; but I had never had an opportunity of 

 satisfying myself that that painstaking naturalist was right. The bird, however, 

 killed from the nest, mentioned in the first of the following sections (§ 339), 

 revealed the truth, and convinced me that in the adults of this species, as in 

 so many otlier Accipitres, the markings are disposed transversely, instead of 

 longitudinally, — in other words, that the young are striped, and the old are 



