LAP OWL. 121 



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 excep- 

 tion to the family characteristic of the Owl's eggs — they 

 are all of a pure white. 



Mr. "Wolley, whose great zeal and practical know- 

 ledge 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. They were 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. 



