LAP OWL. 121 
with the account given by Dr. Richardson, nor of that 
2 
by Pennant, in his “Arctic Zoology,” vol. i1., 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. 
VOL I. hr 
