172 SYRNIUM LAPPONICUM. 



'Gamla poika/ ' Kaunis Pissi-Haukka/ ' Vackra Kissa-Pokko/ 

 'Musta Huulikaja/ ' Pikku Huulikaja/ 'Tcharppis Skuolfi'— the 

 two last the Finnish and Lappish names. * * * * After having 

 secured my capture in a pocket-handkerchief, I excited the dog to 

 bark again, and he soon brought round the small Owl and five or 

 six Short-eared Owls, with perhaps a Hawk-Owl, but no more 

 Huulikaja. Presently, reflecting that I was scarcely improving my 

 dog, I tried some unearthly noises myself, which were, if anything, 

 more successful than the dog's, but still no Huuhkaja. Ludwig said 

 that if any man heard me, he would certainly think it was the Djefoul. 

 This led to talk on the supernatural, till Ludwig ' shied ' at every 

 stump, and I heard several interesting accounts of native superstitions. 

 * * * * Headless men, a glance through the horse-collar, and so 

 forth, aU have place in these arctic lands." 



For the next two or three years, Mr. Wolley prosecuted his researches into 

 the history of the Lapp Owl without much success. Sir John Kichardson 

 had already many years before described ('Fauna Boreali- Americana,' ii. p. 78) 

 the nest of its Transatlantic representative, Syrnmm cinereum, which is so 

 closely allied to it that I am doubtfid whether any real distinction can be 

 made out between them'. It also appears from Dr. Brown's statement, 

 quoted by Dr. Brewer Q North American Oology,' p. 71), that Mr. Audubon 

 had seen an egg of the nearctic form. But I do not know that a specimen 

 of either existed in the cabinet of any oologist. 



According to Professor Nilsson ('Skandinavisk Fauna,' Foglarna, 3rd edit. 

 vol. i. p. 124), HeiT Von Seth, who, in 1842, took a journey into Lulea Lapp- 

 mark, and visited Quickjock, reported that this species of Owl built a very 

 big nest in a high tree or on a high stub, wherein it laid two or three dirty- 

 white eggs. If I am not mistaken, however, this intelligence was not pub- 

 lished imtil 1858, when the last edition of Professor Nilsson's work appeared. 

 Meantime HeiT C. G. Lowenhjelm, who travelled in the same district of 

 Lapland in 1843, communicated to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stock- 

 holm some zoological notes of his jom-ney, in which he says (Kongl. Vetensk. 

 Acad. Ilandl., 1843, p. 389) that a female Lapp Owl was preserved in the 

 Parsonage at Jockmock by Pastor UUenius, having been killed in the neigh- 

 bourhood, in the beginning of June, when sitting on her nest, which she had 

 built in a thick Scotch-fir wood on a stub three ells high. In this, as it was 

 old and rotten inside, a depression was formed, which, without any roof, she 

 had made to serve as her nest. There was one white eg^, the size of an Eagle- 

 Owl's, in it, and beneath, on the moss, lay another quite uninjured. This 

 account, though published in 1844, was, I believe, unknown to Mr. WoUey-; 



' [If they are considered identical, Sparrmann's name, " lapponicimi," applied to 

 the bird of the Old World, must give way to Gmelin's " cinereum^ — Ed.] 



^ [The discovery of Pastor Ullenius seems to have been also unknown to Pro- 

 fessor Nilsson ; at least no mention of it is made in the account he gives of this 

 bird. I became aware of it fi'om one of Herr Wallengren's admirable series of 



