ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 
25 
graphic art can supply, they cannot he regarded as a very valuable addition 
to the work, certainly not in proportion to their, cost. They do not sup- 
ply those shades of tinting so essential to the student, and, being neces- 
sarily taken from mounted specimens, cannot remedy the inevitable short- 
comings of their models. The text, which is largely compiled from the 
notes of other writers, gives a fairly digested summary of the individual 
history of each species. 
Mr. Vennor includes two forms of Gyr-falcons, the candicans and 
the labradora of Audubon, but adds nothing of moment to our knowl- 
edge of the history of the former, and does not include, except inferen- 
tially, Hierofalco islandicus as among the birds of Canada. He gives, as a 
separate form, the dark Gyr-falcon, described by Audubon as labradora^ 
but he is mistaken in several of his statements in regard to this variety. 
It is probably not so very rare a bird as has been supposed, although it is 
little known in North American collections. The supposition that the 
two specimens in the Montreal Museum are the only ones known in all 
North America is incorrect. Mr. Boardman of St. Stephen possesses at 
least tw'O very fine specimens, the Boston Museum has a very fine one, and 
there is at least one in the National Museum of Washington. Nor is Mr. 
Vennor the first to represent, in plate, this species (or variety ?). . 
In the “Ornithological Miscellany,^’ edited by Mr. George Dawson 
Rowley, and published by Trubner & Co., of London, Mr. Henry E. 
Dresser presented a very interesting memoir of this Hawk, accompanied 
with a very fine illustration. I am not aware that any copy of this work 
is in this country, and the writer can only refer to it from memory. From 
this it would appear that for several years past collections of skins received 
in Europe from Labrador have always contained skins of this bird. One 
of the museums of Germany was especially fortunate in securing a fine 
series of this bird, and Mr. Dresser, having learned the source from which 
it had been enriched, has himself since procured several very fine specimens. 
So far as is known it seems to be confined to Labrador, and its specific 
peculiarities, if it has any, are not publicly known. At present we know 
too little in regal'd to it to discuss the question whether it is to be regarded 
as a species or a race, or whether it may not be a melanistic form. It is 
much more distinct, in its external markings, from any of the three other 
forms, gyrfalco, islandicus, and candicans than they are from one another, 
and, so far as is known, there is much less variation in the markings of 
individuals. The writer has no doubt that the birds referred to (North 
American Birds, Vol. Ill, p. 311), under the supposition that they be- 
longed to the Black Rough-legged Hawks, were really of this group. 
In this connection it may be mentioned that Mr. Dresser refers the 
form of Hierofalco found on Anderson River, not to H. candicans, but to 
the more common Norway form of H. gyrfalco. — T. M. B. 
