request of mine that he would send me some notes upon them, was kind enough to 

 furnish me with the following for publication in this work 1 . 



" Notes on Buteo (Onychotes) solitarius. 



" Butfio solitarius of Peale was originally described under that name in the first 

 edition of the Zoology of the United States Exploring Expedition (Birds, p. 62), 

 published in 1848, from a specimen obtained near Karakakoa Bay, in the island of 

 Hawaii, by the Bev. Mr. Forbes, and sent by him to Dr. J. K. Townsend, who pre- 

 sented it to the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 



" In the second edition of the above work, edited by the late Mr. Cassin, and 

 published in 1858, this specimen was described at p. 97, and figured on pi. 4 of the 

 accompanying atlas. In the letterpress of this article the specimen is stated to be 

 * adult,' but the accompanying plate shows it to be in the paler stage of plumage, 

 which appears to me to be indicative of immaturity. 



" Mr. Cassin inserted this specimen in his work under the title of 6 Panclioti solitarius,' 

 but in 1874 it was again (and certainly more correctly) referred to the genus Buteo in 

 Messrs. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway's ' History of North-American Land-Birds,' vol. iii. 

 p. 255; and Mr. Ridgway's views as to the Buteonine character of the species were 

 quoted by me in ' The Ibis,' 1876, p. 231. The preceding page of the same volume of 

 the ' North-American Birds ' contained a description and woodcut of a melanistic speci- 

 men of the same species under the name of ' Onychotes gruberi,' by which it had 

 previously been described by Mr. Bidgway in the ' Proceedings ' of the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Sciences for December 1870, p. 149. 



" It was only at a later period that, through the acute discrimination of Mr. Bidgway, 

 the identity of Onychotes gruberi with Buteo solitarius was demonstrated, the specimen 

 originally described under the former name having been sent to the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution from San Francisco, and having been supposed (as it is now thought, erroneously) 

 to have been obtained in California. 



"The Smithsonian Institution subsequently obtained an additional specimen in the 

 plumage which I now consider to be the normal adult dress, but without any reliable 

 information as to the locality where it was originally obtained. Both the above 

 specimens were described by Mr. Bidgway under the name of Onychotes gruberi in his 

 ' Studies of American Falconidse,' published in 1876, p. 135, and they were referred to 

 by myself under the same title in ' The Ibis' for 1876, p. 476, and for 1881, p. 396, the 

 latter notice being accompanied by coloured figures (on pi. 12) of both the specimens 

 in question. 



" H.M.S. ' Challenger ' visited the island of Hawaii in August 1875, and brought 

 home amongst other specimens two examples of Buteo solitarius. One of these was 

 for a time accidentally mislaid, but the other, a normal adult female, was recorded in 



1 The younger Mr. Gurney finding the draught of this treatise among his father's papers, and not knowing 

 the purpose for which it had been intended, forwarded it for publication to the Editor of ' The Ibis,' in which 

 journal it was accordingly printed (Ibis, 1891, pp. 21 et seqq.). 



