678 O WL 



accipitrinus (the Ohts brachyotiis of many authors), has much shorter 

 tufts on its head, and they ai-e frequently carried depressed so as 

 to escape observation. This is the "Woodcock -Owl" of English 

 sportsmen, for, though a good many are bred in Great Britain, the 

 majority arrive in autumn from Scandinavia, just about the time 

 that the immigration of Woodcocks occurs. This species frequents 

 heaths, moors, and the open country generally, to the exclusion of 

 woods, and has an enormous geographical range, including not only 

 all Europe, North Africa, and northern Asia, but the Avhole of 

 America, — reaching also to the Falklands, the Galapagos and the 

 Sandwich Islands, — for the attempt to separate specifically examples 

 from those localities only shews that they possess more or less ill- 

 defined local races. Commonly placed near Asio, but whether 

 really akin to it cannot be stated, is the genus Scops, of which nearly 

 forty species, coming from different parts of the world, have been 

 described ; but this number should probably be reduced by one 

 half. The type of the genus, S. giu, the Petit Due of the French, is 

 a Avell-known bird in the south of Europe, about as big as a Thrush, 

 with very delicately-pencilled plumage, occasionally visiting Britain, 

 emigrating in autumn across the Mediterranean, and ranging very 

 far to the eastward. Further southward, both in Asia and Africa, 

 it is represented by other species of very similar size, and in the 

 eastern part of North America by *S'. asio, of which there is a 

 tolerably distinct western form, S. kennicotti, besides several local 

 races. S. asio is one of the Owls that especially exhibits the 

 dimorphism of coloration above mentioned, and it was long before 

 the true state of the case was understood. At first the two forms 

 were thought to be distinct, and then for some time the belief 

 obtained that the ruddy birds were the young of the greyer form 

 which was called S. nsevia ; but now the " Red Owl " and the 

 "Mottled Owl " of the older American ornithologists are known to 

 be one species.^ One of the most remarkable of American Owls is 

 Speotyto cunicularia, the bird that in the northern part of the con- 

 tinent inhabits the burrows of the prairie-dog, and in the southern 

 those of the biscacha, where the latter occurs — making holes for 

 itself, says Darwin, where that is not the case, — rattlesnakes being 

 often also joint tenants of the same abodes. The odd association 

 of these animals, interesting as it is, cannot here be more than 

 noticed, for a few words must be said, ere we leave the Owls of this 

 section, on the species which has associations of a very different 

 kind — the bird of Pallas Athene, the emblem of the city to which 

 science and art were so welcome. There can be no doubt, from the 



^ See the remarks of Mr. Ridgway in the work before quoted {B. N. America, 

 iii. pp. 9, 10), where also response is made to the observations of Mr. Allen in the 

 Harvard Bulletin (ii. pp. 338, 339), as well as the former's elaborate review of 

 ihe American species of the genus [Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. i. pp. 85-117.) 



