Mr . R. B. Sharpe’s Catalogue of Accipitres. 231 
Mr. Sharpe,In a footnote at p. 452 of his work, adopts 
Cassinis view, and refers to this species under the title of 
Polioaetus solitarius , stating, however, that he is not per¬ 
sonally acquainted with it. 
On the other hand, Mr. Ridgway, who has been so good as 
to write to me respecting this remarkable bird, and whose 
words I now quote, describes the result of his examina¬ 
tion of the type specimen to be, that he considers it “ a 
Buteonine form, differing from the true Buteones only, so 
far as I can see, in the system of coloration, which reminds 
one somewhat of Milvago chimachima. Like B. borealis , B. 
desertorum , &c., four primaries have their inner webs cut; but 
they are sinuated rather than emarginated, and more as In 
Leucopternis; the fifth is the longest, the first shorter than 
the ninth.” 
The figure given in the plates to Cassinis edition of the 
United-States Exploring Expedition appears to me to favour 
Mr. Ridgway’s view, and to confirm Peale’s original allocation 
of this species in the genus Buteo. 
To return to the Buzzards of the American continent, I 
now propose to allude to Buteo abbreviatus , a species which 
seems to me to occupy a somewhat solitary position in the 
Buteonine family, not grouping very closely with any of its 
congeners. Both the specimens of this Buzzard, of which 
Mr. Sharpe gives the measurements, appear by their dimen¬ 
sions to be females, those of two examples (one an ascertained 
male) given in Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway’s ' Land Birds 
of North America 9 (vol. iii. p. 273) being very considerably 
less. 
The type of Buteo zonocercus in the Norwich Museum, 
which is now ascertained to be an adult example of B. abbre¬ 
viatus, is also, from its small size, no doubt a male bird. I 
have recently remeasured this specimen, and find the wing a 
little longer, and the tarsus rather shorter, than originally 
described in the P. Z. S. for 1858, p. 130; the correct mea¬ 
surement of the wing appears to me to be 15 inches, and 
that of the tarsus 2 '7. 
Messrs. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway ( loc . cit .) describe a 
