104 FALCONIDA. 
identity of these two birds be admitted, the Hen Harrier 
may then be said to inhabit the whole of North America, 
in addition to the other localities already enumerated ; and 
I may add, that several species of true Harriers are now 
known to exist on each of the large continents of the Old 
and New World. 
The male and female, it has already been stated, are 
when adult so very different in colour as to have led for- 
merly to the belief that they were distinct species; and 
we are indebted to Colonel Montagu for a series of ob- 
servations detailed in the nmth volume of the Transactions 
of the Linnean Society, and afterwards in the Supplement 
to his Ornithological Dictionary, which, corroborated by 
the more recent observations of others, have clearly de- 
termined that the Hen Harrier and Ringtail are but the 
adult male and female of the same species. 
The whole length of the male is about eighteen inches ; 
the bill black, or bluish black; the cere and irides yel- 
low; the black hairs on the lore, or space between the 
base of the beak and the eye, radiate from a centre, those 
in a direction upward and forward meet and become 
mixed with those of the opposite side over the ridge of the 
cere, hiding the nostrils; the whole of the head, neck, 
back, wing-coverts, wings, and upper surface of the tail- 
feathers, ash grey ; with the exception in my own speci- 
men of a mottled brown spot on the nape of the neck, the 
last remaining portion of its former brown plumage; the 
wing-primaries nearly black, the first the shortest and the 
lightest in colour, the longest not reaching to the end of 
the tail; the chin and throat ash grey, like the other 
parts of the neck; the breast and belly lighter in colour, 
becoming bluish white; thighs and under tail-coverts 
white ; under surface of the tail-feathers pale greyish 
s 
