242 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
buff on the underparts, suggesting the presence of a recognizable 
local race on that island. The iris of the Dominica birds is given as 
white. 
I have examined an example from Cuba (in the collection of 
Messrs. E. A. and O. Bangs) which agrees very well with the St. 
Vincent birds, except in size. It is marked “male” but is the size 
of the females from St. Vincent. There is a possibility that the bird 
is wrongly sexed. 
Schomburgk gives Buteo borealis as a resident on Barbados. 
Although there is a possibility that B. borealis occurred on Bar¬ 
bados at that time (as it does at the present day on St. Kitts and in 
the Greater Antilles) it appears to be more probable that this spe¬ 
cies (or a closely allied form) was the one referred to, as it is 
common on the neighboring islands of Dominica, St. Lucia, St. 
Vincent, and Grenada, while B. borealis has never been met with so 
far south. Hughes does not mention any hawk ; but Ligon says 
(1673, p. 60; 1674, p. 101): “ The birds of this place [Barbados] 
(setting two aside) are hardly worth the pains of describing, yet, in 
order, as I did the beasts, I will set them down. The biggest is a 
direct Bussard, but somewhat less than our Gray Bussards (Buteo 
buteo) in England, somewhat swifter of wing ; and the only good 
that thev do is sometimes to kill the rats.” At the time Lisbon wrote 
the greater part of Barbados was still clothed in natural forest, and 
it is very probable that some species of Buteo was resident. No 
Buteo has, however, been recorded from the island in recent years. 
The “ Chicken Hawk ” is very common all over St. Vincent and 
Grenada. It regularly occurs on the northern end of Bequia (north 
of the Spring estate) where it breeds, and occasionally it visits 
Mustique. I saw one on Carriacou on August 27, 1904, near the 
late Mr. John Grant Wells’ residence at Hermitage ; but as he does 
not record it from that island it must be a rare straggler there. 
This hawk is a great plague to poultry raisers on St. Vincent, but 
on the other hand is of use to the agriculturist, as it feeds largely on 
the mole-crickets, which, since the introduction of the mongoose and 
the consequent killing off of the lnrge ground lizards, have increased 
to an alarming extent. I once took eighteen of these insects from 
the stomach and crop of a single hawk. Lister (’80, p. 43) says 
that in the stomachs of all he examined he found the remains of 
lizards and snakes. In his time, however, the mongoose had not 
