150 
Mr. J. H. Gurney Notes on 
it would seem that in very old birds they may not impossibly 
become wholly white, as in C. cinerascens ; so that this dis¬ 
tinction is probably not one to be implicitly relied on. 
Under the head Circaetus cinereus Mr. Sharpe unites the 
greyish brown bird* described by Vieillot under that name, 
the dark chocolate-brown one to which Eiippell gave the 
specific name oifunereus, and the white-bellied form which 
was called pectoralis by Smith, and subsequently thoracicus 
by Lesson. 
Assuming this view to he correct, and postponing for the 
moment the question as to whether it is so or not, I would 
here remark that I think Mr. Sharpe is hardly accurate in 
giving as the habitat of the species the whole of Africa, 
excepting the forest-region on the west coasV'’ as I am not 
aware of an instance of this bird, in any of the phases which 
he includes under the head of C. cinereus,, having been ob¬ 
tained to the north of the tropic of Cancer. 
On the subject of the differences of plumage above alluded 
to, Mr. Sharpe makes the following remarks at p. 45 of his 
edition of Layard^s ^ Birds of South Africa: ■’—It should be 
noted that the adult form of this Harrier-Eagle, with the 
black breast-band and white under surface, has not yet been 
met with north of the equator, and it is considered by some 
ornithologists that two species are confounded under the 
name of C. cinereus.^'' 
It seems, however, from the testimony of Schlegel and 
Von Heuglin, and also of Riippell, that the white-bellied bird 
does in reality occur to the north of the equator. Professor 
Schlegel, who maintains that C. pectoralis is specifically dis¬ 
tinct from C. cinereus, and that the latter is identical with 
C. funereus, mentions a specimen of C. pectoralis in the 
Leyden Museum, under its synonym of thoracicus, in the 
following terms—^^Adulte, Senegal, obtenu de Mr. Frank, 
1859^^ {pide ^Museum d^histoire Naturelle des Pays-Bas,"^ 
^ I know not whether Vieillot’s type specimen is still in existence; hut, 
from a comparison of the two descriptions and figures, it would seem to 
have been a decidedly greyer bird than the type of Riippell’s C. funereus. 
