THE SNOWY OWL. 
99 
from a nest in the vicinity of the Moravian settlement, on the 
coast of Labrador. He had commissioned a person to procure 
for him there, living specimens of the gyr falcon, for which the 
owls were mistaken. In the preceding year, peregrine falcons 
were brought to him thence by mistake for gyr falcons. The 
white colour of the owls, however, led the person commissioned 
to procure the hawks, to believe that he had at last obtained the 
wished-for objects. These nestlings were at the time covered 
only with down, and were so young that it was at first feared they 
would not survive until the arrival of the vessel in London. Due 
care was, however, taken of them, upwards of 700 mice, procured 
by an Esquimaux for the occasion, were stowed in the vessel for 
their support; when these were consumed, reindeers' flesh was 
given them ; and when the vessel came near soundings, they were 
supplied with sea-gulls caught upon baited hooks. An examina- 
tion of these individuals has enabled me to correct an error which 
appears in some of the best ornithological works respecting the 
plumage of the snowy owl in the first year. This error seems, 
in part at least, to have originated with Bullock, who states (but 
not from personal observation), that the young birds which are 
seen in the Shetland Islands flying about with their parents, are 
brown at the end of summer. Temminck also remarks, that 
“les jeunes, au sortir du nid, sont couverts d'un duvet brun; les 
premieres plumes sont aussi d'un brun clair.”* Audubon ob- 
serves, “ I have shot specimens, which were, as I thought, so 
young as to be nearly of a uniform light-brown tint, and which 
puzzled me for several years, as I had at first conceived them to 
be of a different species.”! On arrival, when they were in good 
condition, the birds under consideration were as follows : — 
One, much smaller than the others, and presumed to he a male, was considerably 
whiter than the specimen shot in a wild state, whose plumage has just been described, 
but displayed two markings which the other does not possess ; the back of the head, 
where it joins the body, being blackish-brown, and another patch of this colour appear- 
* Man. Orn. tom. i. p. 82. 
t Orn. Biog. vol. ii. p. 136 ; where a highly interesting account of the snowy 
owl’s mode of fishing, as witnessed by the author at the Falls of the Ohio, will be 
found. 
