﻿3 874.] W. E. Brooks— Ornithological Notes and Corrections. 211 



fined to the inner webs) ; chin, throat, and breast are brown of a shade 

 lighter tlian the head and upper back and gradually becoming paler lower 

 down, till it passes into dingy fulvous on the lower abdomen and under tail- 

 coverts ; from the top of the breast to lower abdomen the feathers have cen- 

 tral and terminal stripes of fulvous, the stripes increasing in size towards 

 the legs ; the feathers of the lower tail-coverts are slightly, but broadly, barred 

 with pale brown, and the shaft portion forms also a longitudinal brown 

 streak ; the appearance of the tail from below is brown, darkest towards 

 the basal portion, and barred profusely with whitish grey ; tibial plumes 

 lightish brown spotted with fulvous ; tarsus fulvous, indistinctly streaked 

 with pale brown. The primaries, though apparently barless, are, especially 

 the inner ones, when seen from below, obsoletely barred on the inner web. 

 One specimen is much less spotted than the other on the upper portion of 

 the wing, most of the lesser coverts being plain brown, and the small spots 

 being almost confined to the vicinity of the bend of the wing and to its 

 ridge. 



Mr. Dresser has promised me an immature bird of the European form 

 for comparison, the result of which will be communicated hereafter. 



Aquila ruLYESCEifs, Gray and Hardw. 



For the last three years no additional examples of this rare eagle hava 

 been procured. The African species, Aquila ncevioides, Cuv. with which our 

 bird has been confounded, is, I find, subject to some variation as regards 

 the tail. In my remarks on this species (P. A. S. B., 1873, pp. 173-175), I 

 noted the strongly barred tail of the example then before me. Mr. An- 

 derson has since lent me another South African example, a fine adult bird, 

 which is in the moult ; in it both old strid ^ze«(; tail-feathers are hoary-greyish- 

 brown, and the indications of bars so faint as to be only perceptible in 

 certain lights. It would thus appear that only some individuals have the 

 tail well-barred like the common Indian Aquila Vindhiana, and, consequent- 

 ly, that a barred tail may not always be one of the characteristics of the 

 species. I may note that I have a single example of Aquila Vindhiana 

 with an absolutely plain tail; but of the hundreds that I have seen, all, 

 with this single exception, had well-barred tails. 



The body plumage of this second example of Aq. ncevioides above 

 referred to is of two colours : all the old feathers are light sandy-coloured, 

 while the new ones are foxy-red : the lesser and median wing-coverts, and 

 also the scapulars, are a mixtui*e of purplish-brown of different shades and 

 rufous ; the rufous, in most of the feathers, occupying the centre as a broad 

 stripe, but in some cases being confined to one side. The nostril is vertical 

 and of the same oblong form as that of Aq, Vindhiana. 



I cannot understand how our Indian A. findhiana came to be con- 



