1771 BIKDS FEOM GIBEALTAR 199 



Where a wing or a leg or an head only are sent, you 

 are to suppose that the whole specimen was too stale and 

 too far gone to be preserved before it reached my Brother's 

 liands. The alauda unknown answers well in many respects 

 to the Spipoletta Florentinis of Ray. But as that most 

 accurate writer says that the rostrum of the spipoletta is 

 nigerrimum, and pedes etiam nigri, I must by no means 

 pretend to say that my birds are the above-mentioned 

 when their bills and legs are brown; and especially since 

 all ornithologists agree that the naked parts of birds are 

 the least apt to vary in colour. As to the oenanthe I don't 

 know at all what to make of it; it appears to me more 

 like a variegated accidental specimen than a new species: 

 but I shall hear what you have to say. The outer edge 

 of the first quill feather of the wing of the strix bubo 

 is serrated, a circumstance which Linn, seems not to be 

 aware of; for if he had he would never have made it 

 specific to his strix aluco : since what is common to more 

 than one species cannot be specific. But such slips are 

 pardonable, nay unavoidable, opere in longo. 



As the 07noli galh. are birds of last year their colour is 

 by no means come to its full splendor. My Brother has 

 much to say in defence of his supposition that his Spanish 

 and Barbary partridges are different species. In one of his 

 last letters his words are, "I am perfectly clear about the 

 difference of the Span, and Bar. partridge. I have examined 

 multitudes of each, and never found the least exception to 

 my remark. — That the Bar. sort has always the chestnut 

 collar, cheeks, &c., spotted with white ; the Span, sort always 

 has those parts black, and the collar of a different form. The 

 distinction is invariable ; and I wonder no one remarked it. 

 The Span, is rather the larger bird. Indeed on a careful 

 comparison the whole disposition even of those colours 

 which correspond in each bird differs." 



Shaw's ' Travels ' are to be met with in Gibraltar, and my 



