3(5
ACC 1 PITRE S. FA LCONIV AS. cussed as that which relates to the large Falcons inhabiting
F alco c a n d ic a n s , J. F. Gmelin*.
THE GREENLAND FALCON.
Falco gyrfalco (in part)!.
F alco, Linnceus+.—Beak short, curved from its base; on each cutting edge
of the upper mandible a strong projecting tooth. Legs robust; tarsi short:
toes long, strong, armed with curved and sharp claws. Wings long and pointed;
the first and third quill-feathers of equal length, the second quill-feather the
longest.
No question in ornithology perhaps has been so much dis-
* Syst. Nat. i. p. 275 (1788). f Not Falco gyrfalco, Linnasus.
I Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 124 (1766).
the northern parts of the globe. By the majority of naturalists
they have been regarded as forming a single species, but of
late years there has been a growing tendency to recognize
first two and then three distinct species or races—according
as the idea of what constitutes a species or a race is entertained
by the individual writer. I t is now proposed to consider
these three forms (two of which have many times
occurred in the British Islands) separately, and it is hoped
that the distinctive characters of each can be set forth with
sufficient clearness. In the former editions of this work, all
three were treated as one species under the name of “ Gyr-
Falcon —a name properly belonging only to that form,
which, though frequenting countries not far removed from
the United Kingdom, does not appear to have been as yet
taken within its limits.
In Gmelin’s edition of Linnaeus's celebrated ‘ Systema
Naturae,’ these three large northern Falcons are as sufficiently
defined as many other birds about which no doubt has ever
arisen, though Gmelin did his best to complicate the matter
by misapplying some of the names and descriptions of other
authors in the case of two of them, and while giving to each
the rank of a species, ingeniously made it also a variety
of the other. It is the first and third of these three species,
as they stand in his work, which require especial attention
in a ‘ History of British Birds.’ The second may for the
moment be dismissed with the remark that it is undoubtedly
the real Falco gyrfalco described by Linnaeus as a Swedish
bird, and the true Gyr-Falcon of falconers. I t is the third
of Gmelin’s species, F. candicans, since named by Mr. John
Hancock F. groenlandicus, which is the subject of the present
article. Though this form has been always clearly
distinguished by falconers from the other two, much confusion
respecting them has been caused by the imperfect
knowledge of older writers, which it would be a hard task,
if indeed at all possible, to unravel. Of later authors,
Pastor Brelim, in 1823, seems to have been the first who
decidedly distinguished between the two Falcons which have