278 
woollen rags,and the soft withered leaves of bull-rushes, and flags, 
and plastered with mud. The plumage of the Palestine speci- 
men is very rufous, and we shot breeding birds, both with and 
without the bars on their tails.” 
There seems now no reason to doubt, that our Indian species, 
named Canescens, by Hodgson, and Longipes,* by Jerdon, is 
really identical, with Ferow of Gmelin, Rufinus of Ritppel, and 
Leucurus of Naumann. It occurs throughout northern and 
central India, in Afghanistan, and Persia; Palestine, and North 
Eastern Africa. Mr. Gurney has received specimens from the 
mouths of the Volga, and Radde procured it in the Baikal, and 
Daurian districts of Asiatic Russia, where also he took several 
nests in April and May, the eggs of those taken in the latter 
month being hard set. Ete gives the dimensions of the largest 
and smallest of 19 egos as 2°73 by 2°05 and 2-4 by 1°83. 
There are two very distinct forms, so far as plumage goes, 
which, as well as I am able yet to judge, are both referable to 
this species. The dimensions are identical, and the shape, and 
contour of wings, tail, bill, legs and feet, are the same, but the 
plumage is so very widely different, that in the absence of 
clearly intermediate stages, I cannot feel perfectly certain that 
both forms belong to one and the same species. Moreover, 
while the one form (the one usually brown, and described as 
Buteo Oanescens and I’erox) occurs in vast numbers all over the 
North West Provinces, Punjab, and Rajpootana, the other, 
which I characterized in the Ibis as Muliginosus, no where, as far 
as I have yet ascertained, occurs, except as a mere strageler, east 
of the Jumna, and is only plentiful from about Hansie, north- 
wards and westwards. Nowhere does it appear to be so plen- 
tiful as the other form, and to judge from the plumage, bills and 
feet, if it really be identical with Zvrox, it is the old bird, and 
these we know in many species, extend their migrations consi- 
derably less than the young. Dr. Jerdon tells me, (in epist.) 
that “a very dark colored Buzzard is not rare near Hissar and 
Sirsa, in the cold weather. The tail is coun) conspicuously 
albescent ; I unfortunately did not procure a specimen to ascer- 
tain if it differed, (as I think it does) 2 om the common 
Buzzard or not.”” Mr. Gurney writing of B. Ferow says, “ This 
* Von Pelzeln, says of a specimen sent from the neighbourhood of Kote- 
gurh, (Himalayahs) by Dr. Stoliczka. : 
“The specimen sent belongs to the variety B. rwfinus, and agrees with 
the examples of the adult birds of that variety collected by Herr Kotschy 
in Nubia (compare my ‘ Uebersicht der Geier und Falken, 147 D) only that 
the Himalayan bird has the tail banded, and consequently must be consider- 
ed somewhat younger,” 
