JERFALCON. 12l 



bars: the tail is crossed by numerous deeper and 

 lighter bands, and the bill and legs are generally 

 blueish : it is allowed however by the best informed 

 ornithologists that this bird varies infinitely in the 

 particular cast of its colour, which in some exhibits 

 a considerable mixture of white in its plumage; in 

 others so much that it might rather be described 

 as white with brown variegations, than as brown 

 with white ones; while in others the bird is either 

 completely white, or slightly spotted and streaked 

 with brown. In these varieties it is also observed 

 that the bill and legs sometimes vary into pale 

 yellow, though more commonly pale blue. From 

 these changes in the plumage of the Jerfalcon 

 seems to have arisen the wonderful discordance 

 in the descriptions of authors; which have amounted 

 at length to so confused an assemblage of contra- 

 dictory characters as almost to set at defiance all 

 attempts to reconcile them. The Norwegian and 

 Swedish Jerfalcons are brown, or of the ^ first de- 

 nomination, and seem to constitute the Falco 

 Gyrfalco of Linnaeus. The Iceland Jerfalcons are 

 those which afford the mixed and white varieties, 

 and these have been often distinguished by authors, 

 as distinct species, under the name of Falco Ice- 

 landicus or Iceland Falcon emphatically so called. 

 Jerfalcons in their elegantly mixed plumage, in 

 which the white greatly prevails, are sometimes 

 found in Scotland, and a specimen is represented 

 in the British Zoology of Mr. Pennant. It is 

 observed by Monsieur Daudin, in his ornithologi- 

 eal work, that the beak of the Jerfalcon has but a 



