368 On some new Genera of Raptores. fMAt. 



closed by the lax membrane behind them so as to exclude the water : 

 the compressed, spiculated, free toes, of which the outer fore may be 

 turned quite back, and tbe hind almost forward, aided by tbe com- 

 pressed cylindric and highly curved talons, are the very weapons to 

 take fish with ; whilst the immense wings enable the bird to quit his 

 own element wilh impunity, and to bear off, from the bosom of the 

 waters, fish of far greater weight than himself. Falcons trained to 

 duck-hunting dare not suffer the water to touch their plumage, always 

 quitting their grasp if the quarry can near it in the struggle. But 

 Pandion will plunge dauntlessly into the deep, and will strike fish so 

 large that they sometimes carry him under and destroy him, though 

 he has nothing to forbear from a fish twice his own weight. In India 

 the birds of this genus are not migratory ; they breed in loftv trees 

 overhanging large lakes, laying their eggs in April, May ; and rearing 

 two young, which usually quit the nest in June, July. The white- 

 footed Cuncum {Halicetus Albipes) (which is a vastly larger bird) 

 frequently robs the Indian Pandion of his spoil, just as the white, 

 headed species of the West does the Pandion of that region. Those 

 who have classed the Brahmani Cheel of India (Halicetus Pandicerianus) 

 with the fishing eagles, may be safely said to know as little of the 

 structure, as of the habits of that partry Milvine bird ; or else of the 

 group with which they have associated it. True, Pandicerianus has 

 a festooned bill* : but its feet are those of Buteo or of Milvus, without 

 a trace of the peculiar structure of those organs in the piscatory 

 eagles. Its chief food is insects, and its manner of questing similar 

 to that of Circus. It feeds freely on dead fish and on other carrion in 



winter, 



Strigid.®. 



Typical group. Disc and conch immense. Ears large and operculated. 



Sub-genus Strix. 



Bill longer than the head, straightened, shallow, feeble, with the 



* The armed bill, however, insisted on as a pre-eminent mark of the Raptores, 

 has as much reference to insectivorous habits as to more noble ones. And 

 whenever the tooth or festoon of the bill is, however highly developed, rather 

 6harp than strong, insectivorous habits may be safely inferred. These sharp 

 processes of the bill remind one of the peculiar character of the teeth in the 

 lesser insectivorous carnivora, such as Herpestes. Here also there is high 

 development without concomitant strength: and if we look through the typical 

 sub-family of the diurnal Raptores, we shall find the dentation of the bill most 

 developed, in one sense, among the lesser insectivorous genera, such as our Baza 

 Elanas, as well as the Brahmani Cheel, may be cited to prove that a festooned 

 bill does not, per se, imply 'noble habits. 



