460 
Mr. J. H. Garney^s Notes on 
the Australian Department of the Great Exhibition of 1861^ 
and which^ I understood at the time, was intended to he 
returned to Australia at the close of the Exhibition. Whether 
this was done I know not; but Mr. E. P. Ramsay, in his 
Catalogue of Australian Accipitres in the Museum at Sydney, 
states this is the only Australian species not represented 
in that collection. 
The example in the British Museum is from the interior 
of Queensland, which should therefore be added to the loca¬ 
lities quoted for this species in Mr. Sharpens volume. 
The position of the genus Haliastur, to which I propose 
next to refer, was well described by the late Dr. Jerdon in 
the following remarks on the species inhabiting India, which 
will he found at p. 102 of the first volume of his work on 
the birds of that country :—^It may be considered either an 
aberrant form of Haliaetus leading to the Kites, or an aber¬ 
rant Kite leading to the Sea-Eagles; and its small size and 
near affinities to Milvus have decided me to class it with the 
Kites.^^ 
The genus Haliastur comprises two species, H. indus and 
H. sphenurus ; but the first of these, which ranges from Cash- 
mere and China northwards, to as far southwards as Australia, 
comprises three geographical races or subspecies, the northern 
and north-western, the typical H. indus, in which the white 
portions of the plumage in the adult bird, i. e. the head, neck, 
breast, and interscapular region, have conspicuous dark shaft- 
marks on the feathers; the south-eastern, H. girrenera, in 
which these shaft-marks are most frequently entirely absent; 
and the race inhabiting various intervening localities, in which 
they are present, but are narrower, fainter, and frequently 
fewer than in H. indus ; the birds of this form have received 
the specific appellation of H. intermedins, but vary much in 
the diflPerent islands where they are found, some approaching 
nearer to H. indus and others to H. girrenera, these varia¬ 
tions for the most part corresponding with the geographical 
position of the localities which the birds inhabit. 
Eor further particulars as to these curious gradations and 
variations of plumage, I would refer to the late Mr. Blytffis 
