On some Eastern Oiols. 169 



XVI. — On some Eastern Owls. By J. H. Gurney. 

 Having recently had the opportunity, through the kindness 

 of Captain R. G. Wardlaw Ramsay, of examining the fine 

 series of Strigidse collected by the late Lord Tweeddale, I 

 am desirous of recording a few remarks on some of the 

 specimens in that collection, and also on a few of the Owls 

 in the Norwich Museum. 



The paper on a collection of birds from the district of 

 Lampong in S.E. Sumatra, which was communicated by 

 Lord Tweeddale to 'The Ibis ' for 1877, contains a mention 

 of two specimens of Ninox scutulata, which formed part of 

 that collection, but only describes them, at p. 287, as 

 *' absolutely identical with the Malaccan individuals in mus. 

 nostr/^ As this species was originally, but not very fully, 

 described by Sir R. S. Raffles from a Sumatran example, I 

 have thought it desirable to record the following additional 

 particulars of the two specimens referred to in Lord Tweed- 

 dale's paper; they are very nearly of the same size, and 

 measure as under, the sex not having been recorded : — 



No. 1. 



No. 2. 



In both specimens the fourth primary is the longest, but 

 the third very nearly equals it ; the axillaries are barred with 

 alternate bands of white and dark brown, and the number of 

 dark transverse bars on the tail is four. 



Captain Wardlaw Ramsay^s Museum contains four skins 

 of a Ninox from the Nicobar Islands, which perhaps cannot 

 be separated from N. scutulata, though it differs from the 

 two Sumatran specimens above mentioned in the somewhat 

 more ferruginous tints of the wing-coverts and of the dark 

 markings on the under surface, especially the latter, in the 

 more numerous dark caudal cross bars (five in three speci- 

 mens and six in the fourth), and in two skins out of the four 

 having the axillaries of an unbarred fulvous. In all these 

 respects the birds in question approach the allied smaller 



