ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 33 



records show ; while there is a reasonable cause for suspecting that 

 even this may have come into the possession of the collector in some 

 manner forgotten by him, and that his circumstantial account of its 

 capture refers to some other specimen. Mr. Maynard bases his 

 belief that this species "will be found of regular occurrence in the 

 Northwest " on the supposition that the birds which Audubon 

 figured and described under the name of " Falco buteo," is of this 

 species. That this opinion is erroneous, and that the plate and 

 description cited refer wholly to B. swainsoni and the young of the 

 Western Red-tail (B. borealis calurus), we hold to be demonstrable. 

 It is very evident that Audubon does not describe the same bird 

 which he figures, his plate representing clearly the adult female of 

 B. swainsoni, in the normal or white-throated dress,* while the de- 

 scription is as certainly taken from a specimen of a species belong- 

 ing to the other group. t In our assertion that the plate referred 

 to is a representation of the adult female of B. sivainsoni, we can 

 cite several points in proof: the well-defined white throat-patch, 

 the uniform brown pectoral area, and the numerous bars on the 

 tail, — in fact, every detail of coloration. In the second place, 

 Audubon expressly states at the beginning of his account that the 

 specimen from which the figure was taken " was shot by Mr. 

 Townsend on a rock near the Columbia River" ; it must therefore 

 have been one of the specimens which Nuttall subsequently de- 

 scribed as "Buteo montana"' ("White-throated Buzzard"), and, 

 referring to his work (p. 112, ed. of 1840), we find that such is in- 

 deed the case, since he cites Audubon's plate in the following man- 

 ner : "F. Buteo, Aud., pi. 372 [female]." The case is made still 

 plainer by the text itself, the whole of which relates, unmistakably 

 and very clearly, to B. swainsoni. % The wide discrepancies between 

 the description which follows Audubon's plate and the bird repre- 

 sented in the plate itself can only be explained upon the supposi- 

 tion that the description was penned subsequently from a different 

 specimen, — a procedure well known to have been common with that 

 distinguished author. No one familiar with the different phases of 



* See Pr. Ac. Nat. Sci. Philad., March 30, 1875, p. 89. 



t Ibid., p. 105. 



+ Mr. Cassin identified Nuttall's bird as the light-colored phase of tie West- 

 ern Red-tail, to which throughout his writings he gave the name "Buteo 

 montanus, Nutt." The error was first corrected in Coues's "Key to North 

 American Birds," 1872, p. 217. 



