44. 
HONEY BUZZARD. 
BOD Y MEL, OF THE ANCIENT BRITISH. 
Pernis apivorus, CUVIER. 
Buteo apivorus, JENYNS. 
Falco apivorus, PENNANT. 
Pernis—A kind of Hawk. (Aristotle.) Apivorus. Apis— 
A Bee. Voro—To devour. 
THIS species is widely distributed over the earth, being 
found in India, and in various countries of Hurope—rarely 
in Holland, unfrequently in France, and also in Turkey, 
Hungary, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, 
the Levant, and other parts. In ‘Asia also, in Siberia. If 
the specific English name is to be considered as in any way 
descriptive of the bird it is attached to, it has been well 
observed by Mr. Macgillivray that the tested ‘Honey Buzzard’ 
should be set aside for ‘Bee Hawk,’ as the bird does not feed 
on the honey, the produce of the bee, but on the bee, the 
producer of the honey; except therefore by a sort of recondite 
implheation, its present name must be considered as a misnomer. 
There is indeed one instance to the contrary recorded by Mr. 
J.T. Bold, who says that an individual of this species, kept 
in confinement by Mr. John Hancock, ‘not only ate honey, 
but did so with great apparent relish, preferring it to other 
food.’ May it not however, possibly, have been thought to 
be eating the honey-comb, when it was in fact only picking 
it to pieces, or swallowing it accidentally in search of the 
food which its instinct led it to expect to find im it? 
One kept in a tame state by Mr. Gordon Joseph Fisher, 
of Newton-on-the-sea, lived in perfect amity with three Lap- 
wings, a Seagull, and a Curlew. The one described by him 
had a quantity of moss in its stomach, which, as he very 
justly remarks, it had doubtless swallowed with the bees 
