^°i'9?8^^1 Wayne, Breeding Season of the Barn Owl in S. Carolina. 23 



"My last visit to tliem was on the ISth of January. The two 

 younger ones were now, to all appearance, full grown, but were 

 yet unable to fly. A few tufts of down still remained attached to 

 the feathers in scattered parts of the body. I took them home. 

 One was killed, and the skin preserved. 



"Now, these facts are the more interesting, that none of the 

 numerous European authors with whom I am acquainted, have 

 said a single word respecting the time of breeding of this species, 

 but appear to be more intent on producing long lists of synonyms 

 than on presenting the useful materials from which the student of 

 nature can draw inferences. I shall therefore leave to them to say 

 whether our species is, or is not, the same as the one found in the 

 churches and ruins of Europe. Should it prove to be the same 

 species, and if the European bird breeds, as I suspect it does, at 

 so different a period of the year, the American Owl will form a 

 kind of mystery in the operations of nature, as they differ not only 

 from those of the bird in question, but of all other Owls with which 

 I am acquainted." 



Although I have been endeavoring to procure the eggs of this 

 species for more than twenty years in order to establish the normal 

 season in which it breeds, information has only recently been ob- 

 tained. A pair of these Owls has been breeding for many years 

 in an old mill on the plantation of Mr. J. St. Clair White, near the 

 banks of the Cooper River. Mrs. White, the wife of the owner 

 of the plantation, in answering a communication relative to the 

 eggs of this bird, wrote under date of January 3, 1906, as follows : 

 "Knowing quite as much about the Owls as he [Mr. White] does, 

 through the children, who have always been interested in them, 

 I will state that there were young there [the old mill] a month ago." 

 I then concluded that the eggs must be laid during the month of 

 November and requested the sons of Mr. White to keep a close 

 watch on the building. On November 18, 1906, Mrs. White 

 wrote: "I had to wait for Thomas [her son] to go to the barn to 

 find out what the Owls were doing, and as is usual at this season 

 they have a nest of young." 



As Audubon does not mention in his 'Birds of America' the 

 account of the breeding of this species witnessed by him in Charles- 

 ton, and as this work was said by him to be "similar to my large 



