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The wings expand to a width of one foot eight or nine inches. 
The food consists of mice, frogs, small birds, insects and worms. 
This species inhabits gardens and plantations, even in the 
neighbourhood of towns. According to Savi, this is the only 
Italian species which migrates ; passing the winter in Africa and 
Southern Asia, and the summer in Italy and the South of France. 
Mr. Spence says that “it is very common in Italy in the summer, 
and is remarkable for the constancy and regularity with which it 
utters its peculiar note or cry. It does not merely ‘to the 
moon complain,’ but keeps repeating its plaintive and mono- 
tonous ery of Kew, Kew, at regular intervals of about two seconds, 
the livelong night ; and until one is used to it, nothing can well 
be more wearisome.” Mr. Spence says: “towards the end of 
April, 1830, one of these Owls established itself in the Jardin 
Anglais, behind the house were we resided at Florence, and 
until our departure for Switzerland, in June, I recollect but 
one or two instances in which it was not constantly to be 
heard, as if in spite to the nightingales who abounded there 
from nightfall to midnight (and probably much later), whenever 
I chanced to be in the back part of the house or took a friend to 
listen to it, and always with the same unwearied cry, and the 
interval between each as regular as the tickings of a pendulum.” 
Morris, in his Appendix, mentions the solitary occurrence of the 
Mottled Owl, near Kirkstall, Yorkshire, in the spring of 1852. There 
was another with it at the time, and no doubt from the season of 
the year they had been building or would have built ; but every 
rare bird is so hunted “from pillar to post” that there is small 
chance of any increase of family. This bird is a native of Canada. 
I have endeavoured, in as concise a form as possible, to give 
you some little description of the Natural History of this very 
interesting family of birds. I have had to condense it, as the 
subject is a large one, and to have gone into it more fully would 
have taken up too much time. 
The paper was illustrated by living and stuffed specimens. 
a 
