172 SYRNIUM LAPPONICUM. 



' Gamla poika/ ' Kaunis Pissi-Haukka/ ' Vackra Kissa-Pokko/ 

 'Musta Huulikaja/ ' Pikku Huuhkaja/ 'Tcharppis Skuolfi' — the 

 two last the Finnish and Lappish names, -^f- -J?- -^ -J^- After having 

 secured my capture in a pocket-handkerchief, I excited the dog to 

 bark again, and he soon brought round the small Owl and five or 

 six Short-eared Owls, with perhaps a Hawk-Owl, but no more 

 Huuhkaja. Presently, reflecting that I was scarcely improving my 

 dog, I tried some unearthly noises myself, which were, if anything, 

 more successful than the dog's, but still no Huuhkaja. Ludwig said 

 that if any man heard me, he would certainly think it was the Djefoul. 

 This led to talk on the supernatural, till Ludwig ' shied ' at every 

 stump, and I heard several interesting accounts of native superstitions. 

 * * * * Headless men, a glance through the horse-collar, and so 

 forth, all have place in these arctic lands." 



For the next two or three j^ears, Mr. WoUey prosecuted his researches into 

 the history of the Lapp Owl without much success. Sir John Richardson 

 had already many years before described (' Fauna Boreali- Americana,' ii. p. 78) 

 the nest of its Transatlantic representative, Syrnium ciiieretmi, which is so 

 closely allied to it that I am doubtful whether any real distinction can be 

 made out between them'. It also appears from Dr. Brown's statement, 

 quoted by Dr. Brewer (' North American Oology,' p. 71), that ]Mi\ Audubon 

 had seen an egg of the nearctic form. But I do not know that a specimen 

 of either existed in the cabinet of any oologist. 



According to Professor Nilsson ('Skandinavisk Fauna,' Foglarna, 3rd edit, 

 vol. i. p. 124), Hen- Von Seth, who, in 1842, took a journey into Lulea Lapp- 

 mark, and visited Quickjock, reported that this species of Owl built a very 

 big nest in a high tree or on a high stub, wherein it laid two or three dirty- 

 white eggs. If I am not mistaken, however, this intelligence was not pub- 

 lished until 1858, when the last edition of Professor Nilsson's work appeared. 

 Meantime HeiT C. G. Lowenhjelm, who travelled in the same district of 

 Lapland in 1843, communicated to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stock- 

 holm some zoological notes of his journey, in which he says (Kongl. Vetensk. 

 Acad. Ilandl., 1843, p. 389) that a female Lapp Owl was preserved in the 

 Parsonage at Jockmock by Pastor UUenius, having been killed in the neigh- 

 bourhood, in the beginning of June, when sitting on her nest, which she had 

 built in a thick Scotch-fir wood on a stub three eUs high. In this, as it was 

 old and rotten inside, a depression was formed, which, without any roof, she 

 had made to serve as her nest. There was one white egg, the size of an Eagle- 

 Owl's, in it, and beneath, on the moss, lay another quite uninjured. This 

 account, though published in 1844, was, I believe, unknown to Mr. WoUey''^; 



1 [If they are considered identical, Sparrmann's name, " lapponiciim,'''' applied to 

 the bird of the Old World, must give way to Gmelin's ^' cineremn." — Ed.] 



^ [The discovery of Pastor Ullenius seems to have been also unknown to Pro- 

 fessor Nilsson ; at least no mention of it is made in the account he gives of this 

 bird. I became aware of it from one of Herr Wailengren's admirable series of 



