not observed in the British Isles .' 
93 
To Mr. Gurney we believe the credit is due of discovering the 
identity of the Buteo cirtensis of General Levaillant with ‘ le Ta - 
chard’ of his older, and,among ornithologists,better known name¬ 
sake, the great African traveller. It is true that Prince C. L. 
Bonaparte (Cat. Ois. d'Eur. 1856) quotes the Algerian warrior's 
bird as identical with the many-named B. rufinus last noticed; 
but we are inclined to think Mr. Gurney has made out his case— 
though whether the two specimens of the African Buzzard ( B . 
tachardus, Vieill.) in the Norwich Museum were really from the 
Volga, is another question. Skins from the country drained by 
that river, prepared, as they are principally, at the Moravian 
settlement of Sarepta, can, it is said, be at once detected by a prac¬ 
tised eye—though whether their peculiarities cannot be success¬ 
fully imitated by clever and unprincipled dealers we know not, 
but we fear it is possible. We before remarked of Aquila ncevi- 
oides, that its being a common species in North Africa renders 
its occasional occurrence in Europe very likely. The same may 
be said of this Buzzard, which is not only met with in the south¬ 
ern portion of the continent, but also along its northern shore, 
from the extreme limits of Morocco to Tunis. We do not there¬ 
fore so much demur to our author's giving it a place in his work; 
but we should be inclined to consider it on probation only. The 
fact however is, that, as has been observed by Mr. P. L. Sclater 
(Proc. Linn. Soc., Zool. ii. p. 135), “ Africa, north of the Atlas 
along the southern shores of the Mediterranean, appears to belong 
to Europe zoologically, and not to the continent with which it 
is physically joined. 5 ' We would indeed take exception to the 
word “ zoologically,' 5 for we believe the Algerian mammals and 
reptiles * are entirely distinct from those of the opposite coast; 
but the cis-Atlantean part of North Africa should unquestionably 
be regarded as forming part of Europe ornithologically, and 
we trust the day may not be distant when some philosophic 
belongs to Buteo rufinus; but a still older appellation is S. Gmelin’s 
Accipiter ferox, which we have called attention to above.— Ed.] 
* Dr. Gunther, in his recent papers on the geographical distribution of 
Reptiles and Batrachians, takes a different view from this, and confirms 
the zoological division indicated in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 
above quoted. See Proc. Zool. Soc. 1858, p. 3 77 et seq .— Ed. 
