198 Cabot, on the Plumage, &c. 
adult plumage (i. e. the mottled), about the middle of 
August. Ihave found a number, including the two I 
have already mentioned, in winter and in early spring, in 
holes by themselves, and all in the red plumage. Now, 
no one, I think, will pretend, that they ‘could have been 
hatched and left to themselves so early even as the first 
of March; and yet I have killed them even earlier than 
that, in their supposed immature plumage. 
And again, if there was to have been any change in 
the plumage, it seems hardly possible, that it should not 
have begun to manifest itself before the first of June. 
Then, too, the fact of my having killed a red owl in the 
act of feeding mottled owls of half her own size, would 
appear almost conclusive evidence that the former was 
the adult, the latter the immature bird. For no one 
will, I think, regard it as at all probable, that she had 
_ herself been hatched that season ; and the birds she was 
| feeding were, morever, evidently her young. 
_ It may not be amiss to add, that Mr. Audubon himself 
has represented, in his plate of this bird, the one he calls 
the old bird as smaller than its young. I have myself 
uniformly found the birds with the mottled plumage, to 
be smaller than those of a red. 
It appears to me, therefore, that the Mottled Owl is 
the young, and not the old bird of the Srrrx dsio. But 
if any one, whose eye this may meet, should have an 
opportunity to keep a Red Owl through the summer, and 
place or not, he will confer a great favor on me, as well 
as upon every one who is interested in this subject, by 
placing the matter beyond a doubt. 
