GREENLAND FALCON. 37 



cussed as that which relates to the large Falcons inhabiting 

 the northern parts of the globe. By the majority of naturalists 

 they have been regarded as forming a single species, but of 

 late years there has been a growing tendency to recognize 

 first two and then three distinct species or races according 

 as the idea of what constitutes a species or a race is enter- 

 tained by the individual writer. It is now proposed to con- 

 sider these three forms (two of which have many times 

 occurred in the British Islands) separately, and it is hoped 

 that the distinctive characters of each can be set forth with 

 sufficient clearness. In the former editions of this work, all 

 three were treated as one species under the name of " Gyr- 

 Falcon " a name properly belonging only to that form, 

 which, though frequenting countries not far removed from 

 the United Kingdom, does not appear to have been as yet 

 taken within its limits. 



In Gmelin's edition of Linnaeus's celebrated ' Systema 

 Naturae,' these three large northern Falcons are as sufficiently 

 denned as many other birds about which no doubt has ever 

 arisen, though Gmelin did his best to complicate the matter 

 by misapplying some of the names and descriptions of other 

 authors in the case of two of them, and while giving to each 

 the rank of a species, ingeniously made it also a variety 

 of the other. It is the first and third of these three species, 

 as they stand in his work, which require especial attention 

 in a ' History of British Birds.' The second may for the 

 moment be dismissed with the remark that it is undoubtedly 

 the real Falco gyrfalco described by Linnaeus as a Swedish 

 bird, and the true Gyr- Falcon of falconers. It is the third 

 of Gmelin's species, F. candicans, since named by Mr. John 

 Hancock F. gr&nlandicus, which is the subject of the pre- 

 sent article. Though this form has been always clearly 

 distinguished by falconers from the other two, much con- 

 fusion respecting them has been caused by the imperfect 

 knowledge of older writers, which it would be a hard task, 

 if indeed at all possible, to unravel. Of later authors, 

 Pastor Brehm, in 1823, seems to have been the first who 

 decidedly distinguished between the two Falcons which have 



