NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 659 
Plants agreeing well with the var. obtusilobata were found growing near 
this one, and from the same rootstock of the common species. — CLAUD 
CRITTENDEN, Rochester, N. Y. 

ZOOLOGY. 
HER BIRD AND MorTTLED OwL.—In Volume II, No. 7, page 
380, ne MRON is asked by Dr. Wood, if the Collyrio borealis has been 
known to return to animals which it has killed and empaled, or hung 
upon trees. Only one instance has come under my notice, and that was 
some years since, in the latter part of November. A Butcher bird re- 
turned to a pear tree upon which grasshoppers had been empaled and 
devoured them, though they had remained there some weeks and had be- 
come dry. I should like to ask any person who is acquainted with the 
habits of the Shrike if they kill and empale animals at all seasons of the 
year, or only two or three months preceding winter. 
There is something singular with regard to the vision re the Mottled 
Owl, which the Doctor notices in an article on the Mottled Owl, in 
n 
seemed to be a part of a bird protruding from a limb of the tree, and in 
climbing up to the spot, I found a male pa Owl, with his head and 
shoulders thrust into a small cavity in the limb. I took him out and 
perched him upon my finger, where he stood wE some titis: I put my 
hand upon his back and smoothed down his feathers, when he would turn 
his head and look me full in the face and snap his bill. I stretched out 
his wings and handled him other ways. At last he flew in a direct line for 
an apple tree, standing about eight rods distant, a entered a hole in a 
rotten branch of the tree as readily as if it had b in the night-time. 
This occurred when the sun was shining Faaali at about noon. — 
AUGUSTUS FOWLER, Danvers, 3 
SHEDDING OF THE HORNS OF THE AMERICAN ANTELOPE (Antilocapra 
year old, and shed about three quarters of an inch, and as I kept him well, 
and castrated him in August (to keep him from leaving), he shed about 
ASEN nš 1 by th Instituti , Washington, D.C. — 



