OF NEW ENGLAND. 841 
opens and shuts them, and listen to his hisses. Approach him 
with a light, see him contract the pupils of his eyes, and then, 
as you retreat, expand them until they seem like glowing orbs 
of fire. Approach him with food, and observe the eager fe- 
rocity with which he swallows it, doing so at a single gulp when 
possible. Approach him again, attempt to soothe him, and 
you cannot hesitate to pronounce him an irreclaimable savage. 
(d). His cries are all unearthly. Sometimes he utters a 
horrid scream, sometimes notes which suggest the strangula- 
tion of some unhappy person in the woods, and at other times 
his loud hooting, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Being, it is said, attracted 
by camp-fires, like other species, he often amuses the traveler 
with these agreeable and soothing sounds. In short, no bird 
has a character less pleasant to contemplate than the Great 
Horned Owl. 
In the space left by a change in the text, it may not be 
amiss to give an amusing instance of the fictions credited by 
certain old writers. Charlevoix, says Wilson, wrote that cer- 
tain owls caught mice for their winter’s store, and, confining 
them, fattened them on grain. 
VII. NYCTEA 
(A) nivea.2, (American) Snowy Owl. 
(In Massachusetts, not uncommon in winter near the sea.) 
(a). About two feet long. Snowy white; more or less 
marked with brown or blackish. 
(0). The eggs are laid on the ground in Arctic countries. 
They are white, and nearly or quite 22 inches long. 
(c). The Snowy Owls, as their very thick and white plumage 
suggests, are Arctic birds, though in winter they wander south- 
ward in considerable numbers, being then more common in 
Massachusetts than any other species of this family with so 
high a range. It is said that, though rare in the interior, they 
are of not unfrequent occurrence along the coast, since they 
feed much upon fish, which they often catch for themselves. 
2 The specific name has recently been established as scandiaca var. arctica. 
