THE BIEDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
“ Dr. Sharpe refers the New Guinea examples with the barred under 
tail-coverts to A. cruentus of Gould, and considers them distinct from 
A. torquatus of Cuvier, as the specimens of the latter in the British Museum 
collected by Dr. Wallace in East Timor have the under tail-coverts white. 
Temminck’s plate of the adult of this species also represents the under tail- 
coverts as greyish-white and unbarred. However closely the Astur from 
New Guinea, described by Dr. Ramsay under the name A. sharpU^ resembles 
the Continental form, I cannot agree in regarding it as the same as A. cruentus 
from North-west Australia. I have three adult specimens of A. sharpU now 
before me, including presumedly the type, and will point out where they 
differ from the latter species. The collar on the hind-neck is paler and of 
a tawny-rufous : the under-surface is tawny-red and is more numerously 
crossed with narrow, transverse, dull white bars in the male, and ashy-grey 
on the breast in the female ; in both sexes also a faint wash of tawny-red 
extends all over the mottled greyish-white throat. The under tail-coverts 
vary considerably : in the female they are dull white, conspicuously barred 
with rufous ; in one of the males the cross-bars are much narrower, and in 
the other they are reduced to narrow indistinct transverse lines. In a 
specimen of A. cruentus from Derby (North-west Australia) the collar on the 
hind-neck is darker and of a chestnut-red : the under-surface is not so rich in 
colour as the New Guinea examples, being of a pale rufous, conspicuously 
barred with dull white, these barrings being bordered above and below with 
a narrow line of dark ashy as in A. approximans ; there is no faint wash of 
rufous on the throat, and the under tail-coverts are similarly marked as the 
breast, with the exception of having the dull white cross-bars very much 
broader. Although the New Guinea and North-west Australian birds can 
thus be distinguished from each other, and the name of A. sharpii is 
preoccupied by Oustalet, I do not care to suggest a new name for the Astur 
from New Guinea, as the variable character of the under tail-coverts tends to 
prove that Count Salvador! is correct in referring it to A. torquatus. If 
A. australis ivom West Australia is identical with A. torquatus from Thnor^ 
as stated by Count Salvador!, Lesson’s name must rank as a synonym of the 
latter species, but if it is the same as Gould’s A. cruentus. Lesson’s specific 
name of australis must take precedence. As some doubt exists to which 
species the latter name was applied, I have for the present retained Gould’s 
name of A. cruentus for the small Goshawk from North-west Australia.’’ 
If the birds had been considered geographically, the foregoing account 
would have been practically unnecessary. The type-locality of Gould’s 
A. cruentus was the York District, West Australia, and birds from that 
locality must be considered typical. If Gould’s coloured plate did not exactly 
64 
