PLUxAIAGE OF THE NESTLING BARN-OWL. 323 



Megapodes will be found to present the same peculiarity 

 After these, the best developed, or shall ^ye say the least 

 degenerate, mesoptyles are those of the Tawny Owl 

 {Syrnium aluco) in which a large, though loose, " vane " 

 is present, and this is faintly barred, thus presenting a 

 striking contrast with the earher protoptyle plumage on 

 the one hand, and the " contour " or tehoptyh fea'thers 

 on the other. This mesoptyU dress is worn for some weeks 

 after hatching, long after the wing- and tail-quills have 

 completed their growth, but it is not, as I imagined, worn 

 "until the autumn moult." Rather, it is gradually 

 replaced by the contour-feathers, which are worn till the 

 following year. This much I gather from a specimen 

 killed on June 28th, 1910. In this the head and upper- 

 parts are fully feathered, while contour-feathers are 

 appearing on the fore-breast and flanks, the rest of the 

 under-parts being still clad in the mesoptyle, barred do^ra. 

 Thus the under-parts would not probably be completely 

 feathered till, say, the middle of July. 



And now as to the Barn- Owl {Strix flammea) : The 

 white, woolly down which clothes the nestling Barn-Owl, 

 I concluded, in the paper to which I have already referred, 

 was a degenerate form of the semi-plumous type of down 

 seen in the Tawny and other Owls, and hence a degenerate 

 mesoptyle dress. I then believed, however, that the earher 

 protoptyle dress, or down of the first generation, had been 

 suppressed, but I suspected that traces, at any rate, of 

 this vanished covering would be found when younger 

 specimens could be examined. 



Until June, 1910, I had not sufficient evidence at my 

 command to settle this point, but I am now happily able 

 to set all doubt at rest, having been furnished with two 

 nesthngs which retain unmistakable remains of the 

 protoptyle dress. These remains, on the mesoptyles of the 

 trunk, are mere vestiges, recalhng those which I recently 

 described in Dr. F. D. Godman's Mojiograph of the 

 Petrels (p. xvii). On the peripheral disc feathers, how- 

 ever, they are quite distinct and possess a short stem, 



