1893.] Evolution in the Genus Megascops. 523 
foundation of the theory here advanced, regarding the dichro- 
matic phases of the common Screech Owl (Megascops asio). 
“In the Systema Nature (Vol. I, 12 Ed., 1766, p. 132), the 
Red Owl is first described by Linnzus under the name of 
Striz asio. Twenty-two years later (1788) Gmelin described 
(Systema Nature, Vol. I, 13 Ed., p. 289) the Mottled Owl as 
Strix nevia. In 1812, in the fifth volume of his American 
Ornithology, Alexander Wilson re-describes the two under the 
same names, also as distinct species, and not until 1828 does it 
appear to have been publicly hinted that the two were really 
identical, when Prince C. L. Bonaparte united them, he con- 
sidering the red bird as the young, and the gray the old. 
Audubon, in 1832, sustains this view; one of the red birds he 
figures as the young, being one he reared from a fledgling. 
Nuttall, a few years later, supports the same view. In 1837, 
Dr. S. Cabot, Jr. (Journ. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. II, p. 126), 
while considering the two birds identical in species, reverses 
the order, making the red plumage the old and the gray the 
young, and in confirmation of his views exhibited as seeming 
conclusive evidence, an old red bird which he shot while in 
the act of feeding some gray young, which he also exhibited. 
In July of the same year, Dr. Ezra Michener, in a paper (Phila. 
Acad. Nat. Sci., Vol. 7, p. 53) entitled, A few Facts, in Relation 
to the Identity of the Red and Mottled Oul, states that he had 
seen young Screech Owls, accompanied by their parents, after 
leaving the nest, of both red and gray colors, the parents 
being always of thesame color as the young. “The conclu- 
sion is, therefore,” he says, “ evident, either that the color of 
both old and young is variable or uncertain, or that they are 
specifically distinct.” The latter opinion he adopts, ignoring 
the then sole known case of different colors in the young and 
parent exhibited by Dr. Cabot, very positively concluding 
that there are two species, and that Wilson was right. 
Dr. P. R. Hoy, in his Notes on the Birds of Wisconsin (Proc. 
Phil. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1853, Vol. 6), gives them as two distinct 
species, while Cassin, in his various papers on the owls, 
adopts the conclusion of Bonaparte; considering them as one 
species, and the gray the adult.” * 
Am. Nat., II, 1866, 327-328. 
