188 STRIGID.K. 



Britain by the late Dr. Edmonston, who, early in the present 

 century, as he informed Macgillivray, found one hung up as 

 a scarecrow in the Shetland Islands.* He next saw one in 

 the isle of Unst, which a few days afterwards he shot ; and, 

 in 1812, presented the skin to Bullock, with whom it 

 remained until the disposal by sale, in 1819, of his collec- 

 tion. It was then bought for the British Museum, where it 

 now is. Bullock himself, in July, 1812, saw a bird of this 

 species, which he was unable to procure, in North Ronaldsey, 

 one of the Orkneys, and heard of it in Westrey and else- 

 where, and his account being communicated to Montagu, 

 was by that naturalist published, in 1813, in the Appendix 

 to his ' Ornithological Dictionary,' with the additional infor- 

 mation that Bullock had about two years previously received 

 a specimen from Norwich, in which neighbourhood, he was 

 assured, it had been killed. It has since been shown by 

 Thompson, in his ' Birds of Ireland,' that in the autumn of 

 1812 there is good reason to believe that a Snowy Owl was 

 taken on the south coast of that island, and thus it would 

 seem that the species was recognized as a visitor to all three 

 kingdoms almost simultaneously. But at that time Mon- 

 tagu and others believed that the Snowy Owl bred on the 

 islands of Unst and Yell, though Edmonston appears always 

 to have doubted the story ; and, since this species had 

 received a Shetland name, " Katyogle," which has been also 

 applied to the Short-eared Owl, a mistake seems at any rate 

 possible. It is nowadays allowed on all sides that the 

 Snowy Owl does not breed at liberty in any part of Britain, 

 though it has occurred in every month of the year. 



This species has been observed so frequently in the British 

 Islands that an enumeration of the different instances is 

 unnecessary. In some one or other of the Shetlands and 

 Orkneys it appears almost every year, and, according to Mr. 

 Saxby, usually after a northerly wind. On the mainland of 



* Macgillivray says this happened in 1808, but Edmonston, in his paper in the 

 ' Memoirs of the Wernerian Society' (vol. iv. p. 157) says, "I fell in with this 

 species first in Zetland in 1811, and in the following spring I shot an adult male, 

 which I shortly after presented to Mr. IJullock." 



