206 COMMON BUZZARD. 



intensity towards the roots. The under parts are 

 sometimes pale yellowish white, streaked on the 

 throat and breast with shades of brovrn of different 

 intensity, and on the belly and vent crossed by 

 broad irregular bars ; sometimes they are of a 

 uniform tint nearly as dark as the upper sur- 

 face of the body and very little interrupted, and 

 sometimes a very dark and deep band tinted with 

 purple occupies the whole belly, while the other 

 parts are streaked and marked with a moderate 

 proportion of brown ; the plumes of the thighs 

 are generally dark, crossed with reddish ; the tail 

 is slightly rounded, the ground colour whitish, of 

 a chaste grey tinted with ochraceous, or of a 

 reddish yellow ; it is crossed by a broad bar of 

 umber brown near the tip, and by seven or eight 

 narrow ones of the same colour. In many of its 

 variations it is extremely beautiful. The length 

 of a male specimen before us is twenty inches, 

 that of a female nearly twenty-three. 



PERNIS. Generic characters. Bill slender, 

 weak, bending gradually from the base to 

 the tip; edge of the mandible without a 

 tooth, and very slightly sinuated outwards 

 beneath the cere ; cere occupying nearly 

 half the length of the bill ; nostrils long, 

 narrow, very obliquely placed in the cere, 

 and opening forwards; lores and eyolidn 



