^°1908^^] Riley, The Broad-winged Hawks of the West Indies. 269 



Last ^Yinter, upon jNIr. Outram Bangs visiting Washington, I took 

 advantage of the occasion to show them to him, whereupon he very 

 kindly offered to send me his series from the Antilles for comparison. 

 This he has now done, and I take this opportunity of extending 

 my thanks, for without this series the following notes would have 

 been impossible. Mr. Bangs's series of fifteen birds is a very fine 

 one, embracing specimens from Cuba, Dominica, and St. Vincent, 

 including the tj-pe of Buteo antiUarum Clark. These, in conjunc- 

 tion with the series in the U. S. National Museum, have enabled 

 me to examine over fifty specimens from the various parts of the 

 range of this species, and it is to be hoped, settle the status of the 

 West Indian forms. 



After careful comparison of this material, I am prepared to 

 recognize four forms of "Broad- wings" in the West Indies, as 

 shown below. 



1. Buteo platjrpterus platyptenis (Vieillot). 



? Falco fuscus^ Miller, Various Subjects Nat. Hist., Pt. 3, 1777, pi; 



18. — Shaw, Cimelia Physica, 1796, 35, pi. 18 (North America). 

 ? [Falco] fuscus Gmelin, Syst. Nat., I, i, 1788, 280 (based on Miller 



pi. 18; not of Gmelin, p. 271).— Latham, Index Oniith., I, 1790, 



43, no. 103 (same basis). 

 ? F[alco] cinerascens Bechstein, Latham's allgemeine Uebersicht 



der Vogel, IV, 1811, 36 (based on Latham, Index, I, 43, no. 103). 

 Falco pennsylvanicus Wilson, Am. Orn., VI, 1812, 92, pi. 54, f. 1 



(near the Schuylkill, Penn.; not of Wilson, t. c. 13, pi. 46, f. 1). 



1 Falco fuscus, although commonly attributed to Gmelin, and supposed to repre- 

 sent the Sharp-shinned Hawk {Accipiter velox of American authors), was first pro- 

 posed by J. F. Miller, in a work entitled "Various Subjects of Natural History etc." 

 (so quoted by Engelmann, Bibl. Hist. -Nat., 1840, 182), usually referred to by Gmelin, 

 Latham, and other early authors as "Miller's Illustr.*' Falco fuscus, from North 

 America, is the subject of plate IS, and an examination proves it to be an immature 

 Buteo, probably B. platyptenis, but the tail is too fulvous, and the dark brown sub- 

 terminal band is much too narrow. However, for an old plate, it is a fairly good 

 representation of the Broad-winged Hawk, but by no stretch of the imagination can 

 it be made to do duty for an Accipiter. As this plate is the sole basis of Gmelin's 

 description, it follows that Falco fuscus of that author cannot apply to the Sharp- 

 shinned Hawk. 



Miller's work was issued in six parts, of 6 plates each, and plate 18 occurs in part 3, 

 dated 1777. As the work is very rare, it may be worth mentioning that the plates 

 (with the same names and notation), with some additional ones, were reissued in 

 1796, as the "Cimelia Physica," with enlarged text by George Shaw. Under this 

 title the plates of Miller's 'Various Subjects' may be consulted in lieu of the rarer 

 work. For much of the data on this subject I am indebted to Dr. C. W. Richmond. 



