8 ASIONIDA. 
GUATEMALA, Volcan de Agua(0. 8S. & F. D. G. 14) —SouTH AMERICA generally, 
to Chili and the Falkland Islands*; Cupa1®; Puzrto Rico}. 
It is now generally admitted that Asio accipitrinus is incapable of being divided into: 
races, notwithstading its very extensive range; and that the Otus cassint of Brewer, 
by which name the American bird was sought to be distinguished, has no definite 
characters to separate it from the Old-World bird. 
The habits of this Owl have been described in many works, and there is no need to 
repeat them here; suffice it to say that its occurrence in grassy tracts of any extent 
may be looked for, but it is very uncertain in its movements. The only specimens we 
obtained during our visits to Guatemala were two brought us by Indians, who said. 
they shot them in the rough grass which, with scattered pines, covers the upper 
portion of the Volcan de Agua above an elevation of 10,000 feet, the limit of the 
forest of mixed trees. 
We find no records of its occurrence in any other part of Central America, but it has. 
been traced through a great part of South America from Colombia to the Falkland 
Islands. 
The late Captain Bendire’s account of the Short-eared Owl in North America is one 
of the most recent and complete, and should be read?. Dr. Fisher’s work should also 
be consulted 8. The last-named author examined the food of upwards of 100 individuals, 
and found it to consist chiefly of mice and other small mammals; a few small birds 
were consumed and some insects. | 
Non cornuti. 
SYRNIUM. 
Syrnium, Savigny, Syst. Ois. Egypte, p. 9 (1810) ; Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. ii. p. 244 (partim). 
Dr. Sharpe united Ciccaba with Syrnium in his ‘ Catalogue of Birds in the British 
Museum,’ but we doubt the correctness of this view, and we revert to the arrangement 
of the ‘Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium,’ in which the species with a large ear- 
orifice (Syrnium) are kept quite distinct from those which have a small ear-opening 
(Ciccaba), both genera being without any trace of feathered ear-tufts. 
Thus restricted Syrnium is represented in our region by three species, all of them 
of northern affinity and allied to the well-known Barred Owl of North America,. 
Syrnium nebulosum, which takes the place of S. aluco of Europe, though not nearly 
allied. 
Two of the three species are found in Mexico and one in Guatemala, but the genus 
is unrepresented in the other Central-American republics. 
