286 
Mr. D. Seth-Smith on the 
the British Ornithologists’ Club, held on December 16th, 
1896, by Mr. Ogilvie-Grant, who assigned it to a new genus, 
which he considered to be most closely allied to Harpy- 
haliaetus of South America. The type-specimen was obtained 
by John Whitehead in the forests of Samar, during his 
successful expedition to the Philippines of 1894-7. 
During that naturalist’s first expedition to the island in 
1895 he failed to meet with this species, though he made a 
fine collection of other birds, which were destroyed by fire on 
board ship in Singapore. This great misfortune resulted in 
his returning to Samar, where his loss was fully compensated 
by the discovery of the extraordinary Pithecophaga in the 
high forests which still remain on the Pacific Coast of that 
island. u In these lofty forests,” writes Mr. Whitehead, 
“ the Great Philippine Eagle has made his home, with no 
enemies to trouble him. He is well known to the natives 
as a robber of their poultry and small pigs, but chiefly 
as a destroyer of monkeys, which are the only animals 
sufficiently abundant in the forests to support such a large 
bird.” 
Mr. Whitehead had noticed these large Eagles flying 
along the edge of the forest, but had failed to secure a 
specimen, until one morning his servant managed to put a 
single buckshot from an old muzzle-loading gun into the 
neck of a specimen as it settled on the top of a high tree. 
Mr. Whitehead estimated the weight of this specimen at 
between 15 and 20 lbs. At the collector’s request the species 
was named after his father, Mr. Jeffery Whitehead, by whose 
generosity the expedition had been carried out. 
The United States National Museum received a specimen 
of Pithecophaga from Mr. Pletcher L. Keller, a hemp-planter 
of Davao, Mindanao, which was the second example to reach 
America, and the first authentic record of its occurrence in 
Mindanao. This gentleman saw one in a collection of birds 
in the Public Library of Minneapolis, U.S.A., and one in 
Manila, but knew of only five preserved specimens altogether. 
Mr. Keller’s specimen, a male, was taken near Davao on 
