Genus and Species of Owl. 457 
Mauritius, and who had sent me a few weeks back a series, 
nearly complete, of the birds known from the Seychelles. 
On 17th May I received from him by post a supplementary 
parcel, which left the Seychelles on 26th April, containing 
the skin of a freshly-killed Owl, which, although the eyes, 
brain and flesh of the wings and legs had not been removed, 
having been well plastered with arsenical soap, reached me 
in perfect order. 
My correspondent in his accompanying letter informs me it 
is the first he had ever seen or heard of, though the inhabitants 
recognized it under the name of “Sciu,” a name evidently 
adopted from its note, and not a bad representation of the 
ery of the Scops Owl. I have no further information than 
that it is from the wooded mountains of Mahé. The bare 
feet and tarsi, which protruded through the envelope, at once 
told me that I had secured a new species. This has been 
confirmed by a careful comparison with the species of the 
genus Scops in the British Museum and in the superb collec- 
tion of Messrs. Godman and Salvin. In general coloration 
it closely resembles Scops magicus and its allies from the 
Eastern Archipelago, and. Scops rutilus from Madagascar, 
but is much larger than the latter. Its closest ally, how- 
ever, is Scops nudipes from Central America, in which species 
the tarsus is bare for half its length. It differs, however, 
from all other Owls of the Scops group :—(1) by the fact that 
its ear-tufts, if any, are only rudimentary; and (2) by its 
tarsi wholly unfeathered, excepting a narrow line for about 
a quarter of an inch down the front of the tarsus, while the 
back of the joint is entirely bare. And I venture to think 
that these differences entitle it at least to subgeneric, if not 
generic, rank. 
This bird is especially interesting as being the first living 
species of Owl discovered in any of the Mascarene Islands, 
though the family was probably represented formerly in all 
of them. We know, however, only of one species—the 
Carine murivora of Rodriguez, of which the memory has 
been preserved by Leguat, and of which the bones have been 
so beautifully figured in the recent volume (168) of the 
