been presumed to have tlieir respective homes mainly, though
not, as will presently be seen, exclusively, in Greenland and
Iceland. In 1838, Mr. Hancock brought the matter before
the British Association, at its meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne ;
but in the paper which he then read (Annals of Natural
History, ii. p. 241), he was led, as Brehm before him had
been, into the error of confounding the adult of the Greenland
bird with the young, and of describing this latter as
being brown like the immature Icelander. It was the confusion
arising from this misconception which most probably
hindered his views from meeting with more general acceptance
; and it was not until 1854 that he was able to correct
himself, but in that year he announced (Ann. and Mag.
of Nat. Hist. 2nd Ser. xiii. p. 110) that the Greenland
Falcon was never in any stage dark-coloured, but invariably
light-coloured from its youth. This opinion was grounded
upon repeated observations of living birds, backed by the
inspection of more than one hundred and fifty prepared
specimens, and a careful comparison of no less than seventy.
Mr. Hancock’s latter paper seems to have been for some
time much overlooked by ornithologists, and hence the
erroneous notions previously existing still retain their sway
in some quarters. Of late, however, Professor Schlegel,
Mr. Gurney and Mr. Gould, among others, have adopted
Mr. Hancock’s present opinions, which it may be added are
strictly in accordance with the traditions of falconers, and
to him, therefore, belongs the credit of first discovering and
making public the exact state of the case.
I t is to be observed that nearly all the true Falcons, as
can be proved by keeping them in captivity, assume the
plumage of maturity at their first moult, which usually
takes place when the birds are from nine to fifteen months
old ; and, moreover, that the feathers of the young are generally
characterized by longitudinal markings, while those of
the adult have most of the markings disposed transversely.
After this one change, there is no good reason for supposing
that the colours of the plumage materially alter at any succeeding
moult. The feathers become faded or bleached with
time, but they are thrown off every year, and fresh ones
take their place, the same in colour and markings as those
originally assumed by the bird at its first moult. This has
been observed in several instances to be the case with the
Greenland Falcon. The adult so beautifully figured by Mr.
Wolf in the ‘ Zoological Sketches ’ (plate 34), when brought
to the Zoological Gardens, was said to have been taken in
Greenland the same year. Its plumage then had the longitudinal
markings of immaturity which at the first moult
changed into the transverse ones represented in the plate,
and though the bird lived for several years afterwards, and
regularly underwent its annual moult, Mr. Wolf, who
watched it carefully, and from time to time sketched it, was
convinced that no further alteration in colour took place.
Prior to Mr. Hancock’s discovery of this fact, it had been
thought by him and others that the young of the Greenland
Falcon was of a dark colour, and resembled the young of
the Iceland Falcon, next to be described, and all the white
Falcons, whether marked longitudinally or transversely, were
believed to be adult. But this error being corrected, and
the mode of determining the young as well as the old of
each form being established, it was not difficult to point out
the characters which distinguish the two at any age. The
most apparent of these may be briefly stated to lie in the
bills and claws of the Greenland bird being in life of a very
pale hue, while in the Icelander the same parts are more or
less of a dusky horn-colour; and, as regards the plumage, the
white in the Greenland Falcon being as it were the groundcolour
of each feather on which the dark marking, if one
exist, is displayed, the ground in the other form being dark
with a light marking thereon. In other words, in the Greenland
bird, at all ages, the prevailing colour is white, while in
the Icelander it is dark—being brown or grey according as
the example is young or old.
The Greenland Falcon seems to be most plentiful in the
inhospitable regions which enclose Baffin’s Bay and extend
to the westward. From this tract adult birds seldom wander
to other lands, though the young, especially in autumn and