Letters, Extracts, Notices, §c. 137 



Sirs, — Since forwarding to you the MS. of my paper on 

 Athene chiaradia, on the 4tli and again on tlie 23rd of 

 September last, I have been at Udine and have carefully 

 examined in Mr. Vallon's house the two living specimens of the 

 131ack-cyed Civetta and their three yellow-eyed co-nestlings 

 captured along with the parent birds in July last. I found 

 the former perfectly similar to the two first specimens of 

 A. chiaradia described in my paper, the latter slightly 

 different from the young of the average A. noctua. On the 

 13th of November, 1902, Mr. Vallon sent me three of these 

 sinall Owls which he had killed, for, being fully fledged and 

 very wild, he feared that they might further damage their 

 feathers, which were beginning to suffer. They were one 

 A. chiaradia and two of the normal — co-nestlings ; on dissec- 

 tion I found them to be all females, I was now able to make 

 a careful comparison between the first and my type, and 

 found it to be quite the same in all essential characters. 

 Being better feathered it looks whiter, and its tarsi and toes 

 arc well covered with white feathers, just like the specimen 

 figured by Martorclli ; the top of the head is somewhat more 

 spotted. The wing- and tail-feathers being perfect, I may 

 note, moreover, that the four first primaries shew detached 

 white blotches on the inner web : two on the 1st and 2nd, 

 only one on the 3rd and 4th. On all the following remiges 

 the white longitudinal margin on the inner web is entire, 

 becoming very broad on the last. The narrow longitudinal 

 white margin on the outer webs of all the primaries is very 

 distinct, only on the first four is it notched, a trace of 

 primitive division. On the tail-feathers the white longi- 

 tudinal margins arc entire; on the inner web there are white 

 blotches inside the white margin, except on the two median 

 rectriccs, which have such blotches on both webs. A. chiaradia 

 in this case is again a smaller bird with a proportionately 

 smaller head than the normal Civetta. 



The two normal co-nestlings {A. noctua), although of the 

 same age, are distinctly larger in size ; they are slightly aber- 

 rant from the usual type, more spotted on the top of the head 



