° '1919^ ] Allen, New England Horned Owls. 369 



According to the person who obtained it, it was picked up dead 

 in Somerville, Mass., on November 26, 1918, and its death was 

 supposed to be due to its having flown against a house, or some 

 other obstruction, a somewhat unusual fate for an Owl. Both 

 these birds are very similar and should evidently be referred to 

 the same subspecies. The Mt. Auburn bird has pure whitish 

 facial disks, and feet immaculate above, though lightly speckled 

 with darker at the sides. The Somerville bird, a male, has the 

 whitish facial disks somewhat washed with pale ochraceous, but 

 the feet are pure white. A comparison of these two specimens with 

 the pallid western birds seems to indicate that of the two large 

 races of the interior of North America, they are best referred to 

 the northern, Bubo virginianus wapacitthu (Gmelin), the Arctic 

 Horned Owl. They are not quite so dark above as the bird of the 

 interior United States, Dakota to Nevada {B. v. occidcntalis) and 

 are slightly paler in the facial area. In measurements they are of 

 maximum size, the female with a wing of 390 mm., the male 375 

 mm., hence are not to be referred to the other pallid western races 

 which are smaller. The supposed breeding range of this subspecies 

 is north-central Canada, from Hudson Bay to Slave River, migrat- 

 ing occasionally south in winter to the northern United States. 

 There is one previous record for this race in Massachusetts, namely 

 a bird killed at Waltham, November 30, 1867, by C. J. Maynard. 

 This specimen was formerly in the Museum of Comparative Zool- 

 ogy, but has lately been given to the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, so that the latter institution now has all three of these 

 Massachusetts birds. All seem remarkably similar and no doubt 

 represent this Arctic race. In his ' Birds of the Cambridge Region ' 

 (1906, p. 204) Mr. William Brewster considers at length the 

 status and correct name for this specimen and considers that 

 Hoy's name subarcticus is more certainly applicable than the 

 barbaric wapandlm. In the paper previously cited, Norton 

 records a bird probably of the same form under the name B. v. 

 arcticus. It was presented to the Portland Society alive on Decem- 

 ber 6, 1869, and was said to be from Maine, though the exact 

 locality was not then specified. Its color above " is pale, hoary 

 gray: top of head much as in virginianus: below, white with 

 numerous narrow, dusky bars on the feathers: feet, white, nearly 



