373 
in size the egg of Bubo Maximus figured by Hewitson, while f 
have one specimen scarcely exceeding the egg of S. Stridula 
which he figures. 
The eggs vary from 2°2 to 2°55 in length, and from 1°75 to 
2 in breadth, but the average of 56 eggs measured was 2°33 by 
1°89, 
In this species I have invariably found the female sitting, 
but the male is always near at hand, and very commonly sitting 
on some branch immediately above the nest. I once shot a 
female, sitting on a partly incubated egg and on skinning her, 
found a second egg in the oviduct ready for expulsion, I have 
repeatedly taken one perfectly fresh, and one partially incubated 
egg out of the same nest, and it seems clear that these birds, 
like the Harriers and many Owls, begin to sit directly the 
first egg is laid. 
Capt. G. Marshall remarks,—“ The Dusky Horned Owl is 
rather rare in the Saharunpoor district. I shot one at Seengrah, 
one at Shamlee, one at Kulsea and one at Dhalapie; this last 
I shot at four o’clock in the afternoon, ithad a freshly killed Teal 
in its claws, which it was eating from the head downwards when 
it was killed. It breeds in hollow treesin February. I have 
taken but one egg, round and white, it was in a hollow formed 
by arotten stump of a Toon tree in the Kulsea compound, about 
fifteen feet from the ground.” 
I can, from personal observation, confirm the above remarks, 
as to this Owl’s being by no means strictly nocturnal. I have 
on several occasions killed it in the act of devouring birds, or 
rats, early in the afternoon, and have repeatedly seen it hunt- 
ing along the banks of the canal, a good hour before sunset. 
This well-marked species has been most unaccountably con- 
founded by European writers with other distinct species or 
grouped, with very different types. Mr. Blyth had the follow- 
ing remarks on this subject in the Ibis for 1866. “The late 
Prince Bonaparte associated this bird with Huhua Orientalis 
(erroneously placing H. Pectoralis, Jerdon, as asynonym of the 
latter,) in the ‘Revue de Zoologie’ for 1854 (p. 542). Prof. 
Kaup also, as strangely associates 4A. Coromanda with Huhua 
Nipalensis and H. Orientalis, as also the African Bubo (? 
lacteus (Temm.,) in his division Urrua, while A. Bengalensis and 
A. Ascalaphus are assigned by him to typical Bubo! A. Benga- 
lensis happens to be the type of Urrua of Hodgson. ‘The irides 
of A. Coromanda, in all that I have seen and kept alive, were of 
a bright deep yellow, rather than ‘ orange-yellow’ as Dr. Jerdon 
asserts.” 
