BRITISH BIRDS. 
9 
in the warrens on the sea shores. He describes the 
male bird to be of an immaculate white, but observes 
that others of them are mottled with brown, and sup- 
poses them to be the female, or the young which have 
not attained to mature plumage. Montagu says this 
bird rather exceeds the Eagle Owl in size ; that it mea- 
sures nearly two feet in length, and sometimes weighs 
above three pounds ; while Edwards and other ornitho- 
logists describe it as being less. The irides are yellow ; 
the bill is black and nearly covered with feathers ; the 
feet to the claws the same. In the stuffed specimen 
from which the above figure was sketched, the head, 
coverts, back, breast, and belly were thinly marked 
with brownish dusky spots ; on the latter parts and 
sides, these spots assumed rather a more wavy shape, 
and the primary and secondary quills were somewhat 
barred near the tips. The abode of these birds is 
chiefly in the arctic regions; they are met with in 
Greenland, Hudson’s Bay, Siberia, Lapland, Kamts- 
chatka, Russia, Norway, and Sweden. 
