The Zoologist — November, 1871. '2817 



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 Natuvse,' these three large northern falcons are as sufficiently 

 defined 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 Linnteus 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. groenlandicus, 

 ■which is the subject of the present article. Though this form has been 

 always clearly distinguished by falconers from the other two, much confusion 

 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 been presumed 

 to have their respective homes mainly, though not, as will presently be seen, 

 exclusively, in Greenland and Iceland. 



"In 1838 Mr. Hancock brought the matter before the British Associa- 

 tion, at its meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne, but in the paper which he then 

 read (' Annals of Natural History,' ii. p. 241), he was led, as Brehm before 

 him had been, into the error of confounding the adult of the Greenland bird 

 with the young, and of describing the latter as being brown, like the imma- 

 ture Icelander. It was the confusion arising from this misconception which 

 most probably hindered his views from meeting with more general accept- 

 ance, and it was not until 1854 that he was able to correct himself, but in 

 that year he announced (Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist. 2nd Ser. xiii. p. 110) 

 that the Greenland falcon was never in any stage dark-coloured, but 

 invariably light-coloured from its youth. This opinion was grounded upon 

 repeated observations of living birds, backed by the inspection of more 

 than one hundred and fifty prepared specimens, and a careful comparison 

 of no less than seventy. Mr. Hancock's latter paper seems to have been 

 for some time much overlooked by ornithologists, and hence the erroneous 

 notions previously existing still retain their sway in some quarters. Of 

 late, however, Professor Schlegel, Mr. Gurney, and Mr. Gould, among 

 others, have adopted Mr. Hancock's present opinions, which it may be 

 added are strictly in accordance with the traditions of falconers, and to him, 



