Mr. R. B. Sharpe’s Catalogue of Accipitres. 231 
more colourless, by use and fading, in Abyssinian specimens 
of the Eagle which Riippell called A. albicans than in ordi¬ 
nary South-African examples of the typical A. rapax . 
The coloration of the Abyssinian race is thus described by 
Von Heuglin, for a translation of whose remarks on this sub¬ 
ject the English reader is indebted to the good offices of Dr. 
Bree Old birds from Abyssinia are almost uniformly of 
a grey isabel-colour, which latter tint gradually changes to a 
dull white; other birds from Eastern Sennaar and Western 
Abyssinia are generally, and especially underneath, of a greyish 
fawn-colour; on the breast, sides, shanks, and under tail- 
coverts are solitary, often very broad, reddish or smoky 
brown arrow-shaped spots, which sometimes run across the 
whole feather Mr. Jesse thus refers to a pair of these 
Eagles shot by him in Abyssinia on 27th April, 1868 :— 
“ $ . Iris brown, cere yellow, bill almost black .... 
“ $. Iris yellowish grey, cere dirty yellow; beak bluish grey 
at base, black at tip ... . 
“The pair above noted f were killed the same day, one on 
the nest, the other as he swooped down to look for his com¬ 
panion ; these two examples sufficiently illustrate the varia¬ 
tions to which this Eagle is subject, the female bird being 
almost entirely cream-coloured, and the male so brown as to 
be verging on black; the iris and beak are different in each; 
.... the remaining five specimens I got vary considerably, 
none, however, being so dark or so light as the pair above 
mentioned ” f. 
It seems to me to be convenient to retain the distinctive 
appellation of albicans for the Abyssinian race of Eagles re¬ 
ferred to in the above extracts, as the great majority of Abys¬ 
sinian specimens exhibit a tone of colour strikingly different 
from that of the ordinary typical A. rapax of South Africa. 
The Abyssinian birds, when immature, present a general 
* Vide Bree’s ‘ Birds of Europe,’ 2nd edit. vol. i. p. 94. 
t This pair of Eagles are preserved in the collection of the Marquis of 
Tweeddale. 
% Vide ‘Transactions’ of the Zoological Society of London, vol. vii. 
p. 201. 
