ELEONOBA FALGON. 47 
plate, containing three figures taken from life. To shew however the 
difficulty there is attached to this subject, I will copy the following 
from M. Jaubert's Supplement, just published, written a year or two 
after the above: — ■ 
" We owe to the kindness of M. Jules Verreaux a skin of F. eleonora, 
characterised by an unicolorous plumage of slate grey, denser on the 
mantle, wings, rump, and tail, slightly fuliginous on the throat and 
neck; all the feathers having the shafts darker and approaching to 
black; a black spot in front of the eye larger towards the base, where 
it forms a short moustache, which loses itself in the neighbouring- 
tints, etc." 
The plumage is, according to M. Verreaux, that of the adult. What 
then are the plumages of a fuliginous black with slate shades only on 
the back, which we consider to belong to the old bird? Simply 
varieties? Melanisms comparable to those of certain Buzzards, according 
to Susemihl, who gives as the adult the one we call three years old? 
The variety then must be more common than the type, for all the 
specimens of our collections killed in the south of France are more 
or less black, but never slate grey. 
"One of these birds taken on the sea near the Balearic Isles, and 
also placed in the Marseilles Museum, has a plumage like that of an 
adult Hobby; blackish brown above, yellowish white and russet below, 
with long black streaks; rusty on the thighs and abdomen. Though 
differing from the others this plumage is also considered to be that 
of three years, or the adult of Susemihl, which comes to the same 
thing! We are then obliged to admit that the blackish and slaty 
liveries are varieties probably belonging to an advanced age. The 
plumage of the Eleonora Falcon varies more than any other, and 
sometimes we find a similar tendency in the size." 
Lord Lilford has kindly sent me for the use of this work eight fine 
skins of this interesting bird, four of which I have figured. The first 
plate shews a very old male and female quite black. There are no 
traces of bars on the under surface of the tail of the male, and very 
slight ones on that of the female. The second plate contains a dark 
female just losing the Hobby-like plumage and a male in whom it is 
shewn in perfection — all killed at Torro and Yacca, on the south-west 
point of Sardinia, the end of May, 1874, by Lord Lilford. 
