The Zoologist— September, 1870. 2305 



maurus is gray only on the outer webs of the primaries and of some of the wing-coverts. 

 Circus maurus is, moreover, a considerably larger bird than Circus cineraceus. — J. H. 

 Gurnet/. 



Black Montagu's Harrier (Circus cineraceus, var.; C. ater, VieilL). — In the 

 ' Zoologist' (Zuol. 1806) Mr. Nicholls mentions fiuding the entire egg of a sky lark in 

 a Montagu's harrier, which, as he informed me in a private communication, was shot 

 at the Praul Head, South Devon, by a farmer, and I. have read of several other 

 instances. In the 'Naturalist,' for example, for 1852 (p. 19), Mr. Cooper, of the 

 Warrington Museum, records skinning a Montagu's harrier and discovering an 

 unbroken sky lark's egg inside it. I quote these facts because they are a perfect 

 corroboration of the interesting note by Mr. B. Bates. In the same letter, Mr. 

 Nicholls alludes to a young male of this species, the colour of which was " a uniform 

 very dark brown, appearing almost black at a little distance, except a broken patch of 

 white at the nape." I think this was evidently one of the dark race. I have seen the 

 Canterbury and Seville specimens, and with regard to the Dover one, I think it is one 

 of two examples mentioned in Morris's ' British Birds,' though I have not that work 

 at hand to refer to. He states that two Montagu's harriers "of a uniform dark 

 colour," in the collection of Mr. ChafTey, of Dodinglon, in Kent, were shot by the 

 preventive men at Dover. One of them, at Mr. ChafFey's decease, became the 

 property of Mr. Scott, of Chudleigh, in Devon, who lately showed it to my fatiier, who 

 also last year saw a female of the same melanism in the Exeter Museum, which Mr. 

 D'Urban, the curator, informed him had been killed at Lyme Kegis. I have seen a 

 nice specimen in the collection of Mr. Hancock, of Newcastle, and one in the 

 Chichester Museum, shot at Selsea. Mr. Stevenson (' Birds of Norfolk,' vol. i., p. 42) 

 enumerates no less than ten, so that this melanism, or black variety of Montagu's 

 harrier, cannot be very uncommon. — /. H. Gurney,jun. ; 2, Beta Place, Alpha Road, 

 N. W., August 1, 1870. 



[The following is the passage in ' Birds of Norfolk ' to which Mr. Gurney refers : — 

 "This bird is extremely interesting, as exhibiting a melanism in the plumage of this 

 species, occasionally though rarely noticed in foreign as well as British specimens, and 

 which thus, accidentally as it were, completes the chain between the moor buzzard 

 and the ordinary harrier type. Mr. Gurney, who has met with several examples of this 

 variety, informs me that ' the old male is of a very dark smoky-gray; the female and 

 young are entire purplish chocolate-brown.' Two French specimens, an adult male 

 and a nestling, will be found in the Raptorial collection of the Norwich Museum, and 

 Mr. Gurney has also seen another female from Abyssinia, besides the three following, 

 all killed in England: one immature example, much resembling the Yarmouth hird, 

 preserved in the Canterbury Museum, and killed in Kent ; a young male, shot at 

 Selsea, in the Chichester Museum ; and a female, most probably adult, but not so 

 dark as the Yarmouth bird, in Mr. Newcome's collection, shot by himself some years 

 back from a nest in Feltwell Sedge Fen, in this county. To these last I can also add 

 two other British-killed specimens of this melanite type — one, as I am informed by 

 Mr. Alfred Newton, a male, shot at North Chapel, near Petworth, Sussex, in either 

 1855 or the following year, now in the possession of Mr. Knox (author of The Birds 

 of Sussex'), who examined it in company with the late Mr. Yarrell ; and the other 

 an adult female, killed at Yarmouth in July, 1855, which I recently discovered in the 

 Dennis collection at the Bury Museum. ' Viellot (writes Mr. Gurney) made this foiia 



