QUAIL-DOVE QUAIL-HA WK 757 



last mentioned, there is another which, containing a score of species 

 (or perhaps more) often termed Quails, is of still greater im- 

 portance in the eyes of the systematist. This is that comprehended 

 by the genus Turnix (HEMIPODE). It is characteristic of this 

 genus to want the hind toe; but the African Ortyxelus and 

 the Australian Pedionomus which have been referred to its neigh- 

 bourhood have four toes on each foot, and, though nothing is 

 known of the anatomy or habits of the first, the second, after 

 much discussion, has been decisively shewn by Dr. Gadow (Eec. 

 Austral. Mus. 1891, pp. 205-211) to be closely allied to Turnix. 



QUAIL-DOVE and QUAIL-SNIPE, both book-names the 

 former for Starnosnas cyanocephala a Cuban species which occasionally 

 strays to the Florida Cays, and the latter for species of the 

 Neotropical genus Thinocorys, one of the LIMICOL^E, by some writers 

 referred to the Charadriidse (PLOVER, p. 733), and by others regarded 

 as forming with Attagis a self-standing Family. 



QUAIL-HAWK, the name given by colonists to the Falco 

 novse-zealandise of Gmelin, by later writers referred to the genus 

 Hieracidea or even placed apart as Harpe, 1 a fine Falconine bird, 



QUAIL-HAWK. (From Buller.) 



the precise affinities of which it would be very interesting to know, 

 and one must hope that they may be determined before the 

 extirpation of the form, since there seems to be a chance of its 

 proving to be a less modified descendant of an ancient stock whence 

 the true genus Falco and others have sprung, while on the other 

 hand it may turn out to be only an early settler from Australia or 

 elsewhere. Several authorities, and among them Sir Walter Buller, 

 recognize a second species, the Falco ferox of Peale or brunneus of 

 Gould, which seems scarcely to differ from the first but in its 

 smaller size, its habit of frequenting the bush rather than the open, 

 and its comparative abundance in the North Island, where the 



1 This name has long been preoccupied by conchologists, and that in the 

 very form, Harpa, to which Dr. Sharpe (Cat. B. Br. Mus. i. p. 372) changed it. 



