606 Ldters, Announcements^ H^c. 



1 



of U. albigularis, but a distinct and larger species." I can only 

 reply to this, that having compared together the types of U. 

 albigularis and U. meyerianus, I have found in their dimen- 

 sions the usual amount of difference between male and female 

 of the same species of Hawk. As to the specimen described 

 by Mr. Gurney, as it is a very young one, it cannot have the 

 dimensions of a fully adult male ; so that we can easily sup- 

 pose that it might have grown to the dimensions of the type 

 specimen in the British Museum, which I have taken for a 

 male, while I have considered the type of U. meyerianus to 

 be the female of the same species. Although it appears to 

 me that such is the state of things, I am quite ready to admit 

 that we want a larger series of specimens before all doubt can 

 be removed as to the question of U. albigularis and U. meye- 

 rianus being the same species or not. 



The other point in which I am concerned relates to Uro- 

 spizias torquatus. It seems that Mr. Gurney is inclined to 

 admit that the bird from New Guinea, U. sharpii (Ramsay), 

 is probably different from that from the Timor group, U. tor- 

 quatus (Temm.). According to Mr. Gurney the principal 

 difference between the Urospizias from the south of New 

 Guinea (which seems to extend also to New Ireland and the 

 New Hebrides) and the one from Timor and "Western Australia 

 would be in the under tail-coverts, which are white and 

 unbarred in the second form, while the same feathers are 

 white but transversely barred with rufous in the first form. 

 Such is the case certainly in all the adult specimens (four in 

 number) from Yule Island, which I have still before me ; but 

 at the same time I must say that there is a great variation in 

 the intensity of the rufous bars, which in one specimen are 

 very distinct, while in the other three the under tail-coverts 

 are much whiter and the rufous bars less distinct. After 

 four years' interval I no longer remember how the under tail- 

 coverts were in the specimen from Western Australia (Peron) 

 in the Paris Museum, nor in the specimens from the Timor 

 group in the Leyden Museum ; but Schlegel has figured a spe- 

 cimen from Timor with the under tail-coverts barred, and 

 Mr. Gurney himself mentions another (from the same place) 



