LITTLE OWL. 181 



as well-known to all writers as a bird could be. It has, 

 however, been unfortunate in its treatment by nomenclators. 

 Having been inextricably confounded by many ornithologists 

 with a perfectly distinct and much smaller European species, 

 named Strix passerina * by Linnaeus, who was apparently 

 unacquainted with this larger bird, it has had a variety 

 of names applied to it. In Prof. Sundevall's opinion it is 

 the Strix noctua of Scopoli, though his account of that bird 

 is meagre and inaccurate, but it is certainly not that described 

 under the same name by Retzius, as many have thought. 

 The Noctua glaux of Savigny properly refers to the allied 

 southern form, subsequently called, by Vieillot, S. persica, 

 by Eisso, N. meridionalis, and, by the younger Le Vaillant, 

 S. nuinida. The northern bird was named S. nudipes by 

 Prof. Nilsson, but that epithet having been previously em- 

 ployed for another species, he subsequently changed it to 

 psilodactyla. The generic term is also involved. Noctua 

 and Athene, both the names most commonly used, have been 

 preoccupied in Entomology. The type of Glaucidium, that 

 which was next imposed, is said to be a species not con- 

 generic with the present, and accordingly Carine remains to 

 be used. 



The beak is yellowish-white ; the hides very pale straw- 

 colour : the facial disk greyish- white, passing into brown on 

 the outer side of each eye ; chin, and sides of the neck, 

 below the ears, nearly white ; top of the head and neck 

 clove-brown, with numerous spots of greyish-white ; the 

 back and wings clove-brown, with roundish white spots 

 arranged in several lines on the scapulars and wing-coverts, 

 and varied with other white spots partly concealed by the 

 ends of the superincumbent feathers ; primaries umber- 

 brown, barred with yellow-brown or wood-brown : the first 

 quill-feather short ; the second and fifth longer, and equal 

 in length ; the third and fourth the longest, and also 

 equal : tail above clove-brown, barred with pale wood-brown; 



* This again has been confounded with the North -American Nyctala acadica 

 (see above, page 157, note), and in consequence the latter has been erroneously 

 said to inhabit also Europe, and the former the New World. 



