PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 9 



And this enumeration does not include F. cassini from 

 South America, and F. pealei from the North Pacific, but 

 refers strictly to the true Peregrine, which, as a well-known 

 British bird, and the favourite of falconers, has always been 

 especially interesting to English bird lovers. The plumages 

 of some of this series are commented on by my father in the 

 ' Ibis/ 1882, p. 295, where he remarks that the Common 

 Peregrine, like a good many other birds, appears to have 

 two phases of plumage, a light phase and a dark phase, and 

 whichever of the two they start with they carry through life. 

 This is true dimorphism — as also exemplified in Stercorarius 

 crepidatus and in some Owls, e. g. Scops asio. 



The Museum can show, as explanatory of the distribution 

 of the Owls, Brachyotus accipitrinus from all sorts of places, 

 such as 



Tarigiers, 



Erzeroum, 



Shanghai, 



Labrador, 



Falkland Islands, 



Volga River, 



Yarkand, 



Sandwich Islands, 



Nebraska, 



South Carolina, 

 etc., — 

 fifty-two specimens in all, — and Otus vulgaris (the British 

 Long-eared Owl) from widely removed localities ranging from 

 Norfolk to Japan. 



Strisc in all its forms is largely represented : S. flammea * 



* It is a lasting disgrace that, in a country like England, which professes 

 to be highly civilized, Owls should be so much persecuted, and particu- 

 larly the harmless Barn-Owl (Stri.cjlammea), which is becoming quite a 

 rare bird in the eastern counties. This is almost entirely due to excessive 

 and indiscriminate game-preserving, but the truth is that every farmer 

 or gamekeeper who kills a Barn-Owl slays a friend. Among the many 

 scores of cast-up pellets and remains of Barn-Owls' meals which I have 

 examined at various times I have never found a bird bigger than a 

 Thrush, and that only once, while the only trace of game was the leg 

 of one very young rabbit, and once the beak of a chicken. On the 

 other hand, I have found mice without number, shrews sometimes, and 



