486 Prof. A. Newton on the Great Northern Falcons. 



in your Journal and its predecessor, that I beg the favour of 

 making a few observations on Mr. Shai-pe's recently published 

 remarks (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1873, pp. 414-419), in which he 

 has reopened the question thought by the best-informed orni- 

 thologists to have been settled nineteen years ago by Mr. John 

 Hancock (Ann. & Mag. N. H. ser. 2, xiii. pp. 110-112). 

 Such of your readers as take any interest in the subject are 

 aware that, in 1833, Mr. Hoy (Mag. N. H. vi. pp. 107-110) 

 pointed out the distinctness of the Norwegian form, to which 

 the name of Gyrfalcon properly applies ; and that, in 1838, 

 Mr. Hancock (Ann. N. H. ii. pp. 241-250) established the 

 difference of the two birds which mainly have their respective 

 homes in Iceland and Greenland, being, however, accidentally 

 led into a pardonable error, which he afterwards [loc. secundh 

 cit.) corrected. This error w^as one prevalent at the time, and 

 even subsequently, among those who had had but few oppor- 

 tunities of observing (or of knowing from those who had ob- 

 served it) the fact that these Falcons assmne their mature 

 plumage at the first moidt. This fact has been proved by 

 repeated and continuous observations, carried on not only in 

 this country but abroad, and not only in zoological gardens, 

 where inattention to the requirements of the captives might 

 not impossibly affect the due course of nature, but in falconers' 

 mews, where the birds are kept in the very hig]r\st state of 

 health and condition. It is, however, denied by Mr. Sharpe, 

 who falls back on the old and, I may say, exploded belief that 

 these Falcons continue to change the character of their plumage 

 as they advance in age. I have read his paj)er carefully, and 

 he has obligingly allowed me to examine minutely the score 

 of specimens in the British Museum on which he partly rests 

 his theory ; but I am unable to find the slightest ground for 

 doubting the truth of Mr. Hancock's statement published, as 

 before mentioned, in this Journal in 1854 — a statement, I 

 must add, wdiich is strictly in accordance with the traditions of 

 falconers, than whom, in such a matter as this, there can 

 scarcely be better authorities. Furthermore, I have first and 

 last examined some hundreds of specimens with the same 

 result ; for the subject is one in which I have long taken great 

 interest ; and I therefore desire to protest against the retrograde 

 opinion now resuscitated by Mr. Sharpe. 



I am unwiUing to trespass too much on your space, or 

 I would comment on some others of Mr. Sharpe's dicta in the 

 same paper. I will content myself with two remarks. " No 

 one," he says, ''therefore, can hope to say positively what 

 Holboll's Falco arcticus really was." Now this supposed 

 species was long ago perfectly well known ; for specimens 



