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where a place had been assigned to it in the most recent syste- 
matic works of Gould, Schlegel, and G. R. Gray. 
The second genus in Mr. Sharpe’s arrangement of the Bu- 
teonine bears the title of Heterospizias, under which name 
Mr. Sharpe has separated, and, I think, legitimately, Falco 
meridionalis of Latham, a species which has been referred to 
no less than ten different genera by previous ornithological 
authors. 
Mr. Sharpe places the genus Tachytriorchis third on his 
list; but it will be convenient for my purpose to postpone its 
consideration till after I have referred to the first species enu- 
merated by him as belonging to the genus Buteo, the so-called 
‘‘ Chilian Sea-Eagle ”’*. 
I quite agree with Mr. Sharpe in placing this fine species 
in the Buteonine subfamily ; but I think it sufficiently distinct 
to make it advisible to retain for it the subgeneric name of 
Geranoaétus proposed by Kaup, and adopted by some subse- 
quent authorities, amongst the most recent of whom are 
Messrs. Sclater and Salvin, in. their ‘Nomenclator Avium 
Neotropicalium,’ p. 119. : 
According to D’Orbigny (‘ Bia dans VP Amérique Méri- 
dionale,’ Oiseaux, p. 77), this species does not attain its full 
plumage till it has reached its fourth year; and its interme- 
diate stages are described in considerable detail by that careful 
observer; but neither he nor Mr. Sharpe mentions a phase 
of plumage which occurs when the bird has nearly completed 
its progress towards maturity +, and which I will therefore de- 
scribe from a specimen .in the Norwich Museum, a female, 
obtained in Ecuador :—Upper surface as in Mr. Sharpe’s de- 
* Vide ‘Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society,’ 1831, p. 85, 
also ‘ Revised List of the Vertebrated Animals in the Gardens of the 
Zoological Society,’ 1872, p. 214. 
+ This phase does not occur in the case of every yy and perhaps 
only in the females—as a young male from Chili, in the ah Museum, 
is evidently changing from the plumage dearnated by Mr. Sharpe as 
“young” into that which he defines as “ adult,” without passing through 
the intermediate stage to which I have here alluded. In the normal adult 
female the slaty black on the chest extends about an inch lower than it 
does in the adult male. 














