io8 
allen’s naturalist’s library. 
dark recesses of a building or a tree, rather than the open 
srass-country. Seven forms of the Common Barn-Owl are 
recognised by naturalists, hut these birds vary m plumage 
considerably, and they are all so closely connected by m er- 
mediate forms, that it is difficult to say where one race ends 
and another commences its range. 
The most distinct of the Barn-Owls are the large S/y. 
castanops and S. nova hollandia of Australia, all the other 
snecies being merely forms of the ordinary Barn-Ow (. 1 ). 
flammed). Some of these, however, are fairly f cognisable as 
races especially the pale form, S. deltcaiula, of Australia and 
Oceania, and the island races from the Cape Verd Islands 
(Sirix insularis), and the Galapagos Islands punctaiis- 
sima), both of which are very dark and thickly spotted forms. 
I am still under the same impression as m 1875, when 1 
wrote the second volume of the “ Catalogue of Birds, that 
“there is one dominant type of Bara-Owl which Pievails 
generally over the continents of the Old and New Wor ds, 
being darker or lighter according to different localities, but 
possessing no distinctive specific characleis. 
I. THE BARN-OWL. STRIX FLAMMEA. 
Strix flammea, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 133 (1766) ; Macgill. Brit. 
B. iii. p. 473 (1840) ; Sharpe, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. 11. ix 291 
087 3) ; Dresser, B. Eur. i. p. 237, pi. 302 (1879) ; B. O. 
tJ List Br. B. p. 85 (1883); Saunders, Man. Br. b. p. 
281 (1889); Lilford, Col. Fig. Br. B. part xiv. (1890). 
ihuo flammeus, Newt. ed. Yarn Brit. B. 1. p. 194 (1872); 
Seeb. Brit. B. i. p. 148(1883). 
(Plate XL.) 
Adult Male.— General colour above orange-buff, with white 
spots at or near the end of each feather, relieved by a corre- 
sponding spot of blackish; the back and scapulars mottled 
with silvery-grey; quids orange-buff, shading off into whitish 
near the base and on the inner webs, the secondaries rather 
deeper orange, tipped with whitish, the innermost secondaries 
mottled with grey like the back ; tail whitish, washed with pale 
orange, the centre feathers slightly speckled with brown, these 
markings disappearing towards the outer feathers, whicli are 
