46 
SNOW OWL. 
Their nest is built on the ground, in a grass or clover field, 
and formed of old withered leaves and dry grass, and lined, 
with hair. The female lays four or five eggs, of a grayish 
white. On the first week in May, 1 found one of their nests 
with four young, from which circumstance I think it probable 
that they raise two or more broods in the same season. 
This bird measures five inches and three quarters in length, 
and ten inches and a half in extent ; the upper parts are 
cinereous brown, mottled with deep brown or black ; lesser 
wing-coverts, bright bay ; greater, black, edged with very pale 
brown ; wings, dusky, edged with brown ; the exterior primary, 
edged with white ; tail, sub-cuneiform, the outer feather white 
on the exterior edge, and tipt with white ; the next, tipt and 
edged for half an inch with the same; the rest, dusky, edged 
with pale brown ; bill, dark brown above, paler below ; round 
the eye is a narrow circle of white ; upper part of the breast, 
yellowish white, thickly streaked with pointed spots of black 
that pass along the sides ; belly and vent, white ; legs and feet, 
flesh coloured ; third wing-feather from the body, nearly as 
long as the tip of the wing when shut. 
I can perceive little or no difference between the colours 
and markings of the male and female. 
SNOW OWL STRIX NYCTEA Plate XXXII. Fig. 1. Male. 
Lath. i. 132. No. 17. — Buff. i. 387. — Great White Owl, Edw. 61 — Snowy Owl, 
Arct. Zool. 233. No. 121 Beale's Museum, , No. 458. 
S URNIA NYCTEA. — Dumf.ril. 
Snowy Owl, Mont. Orn. Diet. Supp Bewick's Brit. Birds, Supp. — Snowy Owl, 
Strix nyctea, Selby's Brit. Orn. p. 58, pi. 23 Strix nyctea, Temm. Man. i. 
p. 82 Flem. Br. Anim. p. 58 Bonap. Synop. p. 36. — North. Zool. ii, p. 88. 
The Snow Owl represented in the plate is reduced to half 
its natural size. To preserve the apparent magnitude, the 
other accompanying figures are drawn by the same scale. 
This great northern hunter inhabits the coldest and most 
dreary regions of the northern hemisphere on both continents. 
