204 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



men, probably belonging to one of the pale western races, in Mus. Comp. Zool. 

 collection, taken at Waltham, Nov. 30, 1867, by C. J. Maynard." ^ This bird 

 (a mounted specimen numbered 8336 in the Museum catalogue) was afterwards 

 refen-ed by Howe and Allen to the Western Horned Owl, Bubo virginiaiius 

 subarcticus (Hoy), of which they considered it "a typical female specimen." ^ 



On comparing it with a large series of skins which represent all the North 

 American subspecies of Bubo (excepting one peculiar to Alaska) which are recog- 

 nized by the latest authority on the genus, Mr. Oberholser, 1 find that the Wal- 

 tham specimen is distinctly unlike any of the Great Horned Owls which are 

 known to breed in the United States, and that it must be referred to the form 

 which for many years has been generally known as arcticus. Indeed it is prac- 

 tically indistinguishable from several specimens of that race which I have re- 

 ceived from Alberta and which apparently represent what Mr. Oberholser 

 considers — as I think rightly — a dark phase of 'airticus.' No doubt the 

 Waltham bird wandered to Massachusetts from some locality in the interior 

 of British North America, and not from the western United States, as Howe 

 and Allen seem to have thought. Owing to a singular combination of circum- 

 stances, however, the Latin (but not the English) name, under which they 

 recorded it, is that which it should continue to bear. 



In a paper published^ in 1896 Mr. Stone brought forward evidence which 

 confirms the opinion held by several earlier writers (including Cassin, Baird, 

 Brewer, and Ridgway, and Coues) to the effect that the name subarcticus Hoy 

 must be regarded as a pure synonym of arcticus Swainson. In the same con- 

 nection he proposed to divide the light-colored Horned Owls of the western 

 United States, to one or more of which the name subarcticus had been repeatedly 

 and at times very generally applied, into two forms. For " the small southern 

 California subspecies" he used the m.xae pacijicus originally suggested by Cassin. 

 "For the large form from the Great Plains" he proposed the new name occi- 

 dentalis. A year later he decided that the "name ' occidentalis' must be rele- 

 gated to synonymy " for the reason that it had been based on a specimen which 

 " unfortunately proves to be intermediate between B. virginianus and arcticus." * 

 To replace the name occidenialis he then proposed "for the Horned Owl of the 

 interior United States (the 'subarcticus' of authors, nee. Hoy) the m.mQ palles- 

 cens, designating as the type, No. 1522 19, Coll. U. S. Nat. Mus. c? Watson Ranch, 



• A. P. Morse, Birds of Wellesley and Vicinity, 1897, 23. 



2 R. H. Howe, Jr., and G. M. Allen, Birds of Massachusetts, 1901, 68. 

 ••' W. Stone, Auk, XIII, 1896, 153-156. 



* W. Stone, American Naturalist, XXXI, 1897, 236. 



