LAP OWL. 137 
of these birds was taken alive, February, 1831, at Mablehead, Massa- 
chussets. I went to Salem to see it, bi.it it had died, and I could not 
trace the remains. Mr. Ince, in whose keeping it had been for several 
months, fed it on fish and small birds, of which it was very fond. It 
uttered at times a tremulous cry, not unlike that of Strix Asio, the 
Little Screech Owl, and shewed a great antipathy to cats and dogs. 
The comparatively small size of this bird's eyes renders it possible 
that it hunts by day, and the marked smallness of its feet and claws 
leads me to think that it does not prey upon large animals." 
This last inference of Audubon is not in accordance with the account 
given by Dr. Richardson, nor of that by Pennant, in his "Arctic 
Zoology," vol. ii., page 232, who says, "Feeds on mice and hares. Flies 
very low, and yet seizes its prey with such force that in winter it will 
sink into the snow a foot deep, and with great ease will fly away with 
the American hare alive in its talons. It makes its nest in a pine tree 
in the middle of May, with a few sticks lined with feathers, and lays 
two eggs spotted with a darkish colour. The young take wing the 
end of July. Length two feet, extent four." 
With regard to this remark of Pennant, that the eggs were "spotted 
with a darker colour," there is no doubt that it is a mistake, and that 
some adventitious spots, probably of dirt or blood, had existed on the 
eggs which he described. I believe there is no exception to the family 
characteristic of the Owl's eggs — they are all of a pure white. 
Mr. Wolley, whose great zeal and practical knowledge as a naturalist 
I have had occasion to notice before, has found the nest and taken the 
eggs of the Lap Owl in Lapland, and I have much pleasure in quoting 
here an abstract of his paper, published in the Proceedings of the 
Zoological Society for March, 1857, page 56 : — 
"Two nests of the Lap Owl were found in Finnish Lapland, in 1856. 
In one near Sodankyla there were two eggs, and when one of the 
birds was shot, a third egg was found ready for exclusion. It was 
placed on the jagged end of the stump of a large Scotch fir, about 
twelve feet from the ground, at which spot the tree had been snapped 
across by some storm, the upper part not yet entirely separated, but 
sloping downwards till the greater part of its weight was supported by 
the ground. 
The other nest was near Annasjoki, at the top of a lowish Scotch 
fir. Some time previously in the same year a bird had been shot at 
this spot, which was found to be a female with eggs inside. The nest 
was not observed until after the shot was fired. At the second visit, 
on the 28th. of May, there were two eggs in the nest, and again a 
bird was shot, which turned out to be another female, with a fully- 
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