HARLE—HARPY 407 
reference to the trilling sound of its musical notes. The name is 
current in Orkney ; but with it must be noticed 
HARLE, the name given, both there and in Shetland, to one of 
the MERGANSERS, and probably cognate if not identical with the 
French Harle or Herle (Belon, Hist. Oys. p. 164) which has the same 
meaning, though how a French word should reach and come into 
use among a Scandinavian population is not easily explained, except 
on the supposition that Harle is a contracted form of Hdvelle (as 
above), and the name has been transferred from one species to 
another. 
HARLEQUIN (with the suffix) DUCK was Forster’s rendering 
in 1791 (Cat. Anim. N. Am. p. 16) of Anas histrionica of Linneus, 
and since maintained as the common English name of that beauti- 
ful species, which inhabits the northern part of the Holarctic Region 
from Iceland westward to some undetermined limit in Siberia ; but 
is unknown, except as a rare wanderer, to the British Islands or 
Continental Europe. It belongs to the subfamily Fuliguline 
(PocHARD), and has been often placed in the genus Clangula 
(GOLDEN-EYE), from which, however, it differs sufficiently to deserve 
separation as Cosmonetta or Histrionicus. 'The epithet Harlequin has 
been applied by Gould to one of the Australian Bronze-wing 
PIGEONS, Phaps histrionica, and by Gurney to an African QUAIL, 
Coturnia delegorguit. 
HARPY, a large diurnal Bird-of-Prey, so named after the 
mythological monster of the classical poets,\—the Thrasaetus harpyia 
of modern ornithologists,—an inhabitant of the warmer parts of 
America from Southern Mexico to Brazil. Though known for 
more than two centuries, its habits have come very little under the 
notice of naturalists, and what is said of them by the older writers 
must be received with some suspicion. A cursory inspection of the 
bird, which is not unfrequently brought alive to Europe, its size, 
and its enormous bill and talons, at once suggest the vast powers of 
destruction imputed to it, and are enough to account for the stories 
told of its ravages on mammals,—sloths, fawns, peccaries, and 
spider-monkeys. It has even been asserted to attack the human 
race. How much of this is fabulous there seems no means at 
present of determining, but some of the statements are made by 
veracious travellers—D’Orbigny and Tschudi. It is not uncommon 
in the forests of the isthmus of Panama, and Mr. Salvin says (Proc. 
Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 368) that its flight is slow and heavy. Indeed 
its Owllike visage, its short wings and soft plumage, do not indicate 
a bird of very active habits, but the weapons of offence with which, 
1 But the pry or harpa of their prose-writers seems to have been the 
LAMMERGEYER. 
