66 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



believe this fine Owl to be an inhabitant of the great brushes 

 of New South Wales, those of the Clarence, Richmond, &c. ; 

 for since the publication of my figure in the folio edition of 

 the * Birds of Australia,' I have received an example said to 

 have been procured in one of those districts. 



A fine specimen is comprised in the collection of the 

 British Museum, and a second example in that of the Academy 

 of Sciences at Philadelphia. It is a very powerful bird, and 

 the rarest in our collections of the Australian members of the 

 genus to which it belongs, from all of which it is conspicuously 

 distinguished by the dark sooty hue of its plumage, and by 

 the primaries being of a uniform colour, or destitute of the 

 bars common to all the other species. 



Facial disk sooty grey, becoming much deeper round the 

 eyes ; upper surface brownish black, with purplish reflexions, 

 and with a spot of white near the tip of each feather ; wings 

 and tail of the same hue but paler, the primaries of a uni- 

 form tint, without bars, those of the tail faintly freckled 

 with narrow irregular lines of white ; under surface brownish 

 black, washed with buff, and with the white marks much less 

 decided ; legs mottled brown and white ; irides dark brown ; 

 bill horn-colour ; feet yellowish. 



Total length, 16 inches; bill. If; wing, 12; tail, 5J; 

 tarsi, 3. 



Sp. 31. STRIX DELICATULUS, Gould. 



I Delicate Owl. 



Sirix delicaiidus, Gould, in Proc. of Zool. Soc, part iv., 1836, p. 140. 

 Yon-ja, Aborigines of the Lowlands of Western Australia. 



Strix delicatulus, Gould, Birds of Australia, fol. vol. i. pi. 31. 



This is the least of the Australian Owls belonging to that 

 section of the group to which the generic terra of Strix has 

 been retained ; it is also the one most generally distributed. 



