lias given, in liis usual entertaining style, an account of the
proceeding, started from Rome with a dozen of young Little
Owls in a cage, five of which surviving the vicissitudes of
the journey, he released from their confinement at Walton,
near Wakefield, in the May of the following year. There is
reason to believe that others have tried the like experiment
without making public the fa c t; and it is certain that a considerable
number of living birds of this species are annually
received in London usually from Holland. Examples both
alive and dead are frequently exposed for sale in the markets
of Germany, Italy and France.
Throughout most parts of Europe the Little Owl is a well-
known resident. It is abundant in France, Belgium and
Holland, and thence northward to Denmark; hut it has
never been observed in Norway and has only once strayed to
Sweden. In North Germany, according to Dr. Borggreve,
it is far more common in the west than in the east.
Herr Radde states that he obtained a specimen in Eastern
Siberia, whence perhaps we may infer that the range of this
bird extends across the Russian dominions; hut its limits
cannot at present he traced with any great precision, since
to the east and south there occurs a very nearly allied, if
indeed distinct, species, distinguished hy several names (of
which more presently) and many ornithologists, not recognizing
the asserted differences between the two forms, leave
that to which their observations refer a matter of doubt.
However, examples of the Little Owl from Odessa, Sevastopol,
Constantinople and Smyrna, seem to be admittedly
identical with those from central and western Europe. In
Greece, Italy and Spain the same is the case, and the bird
is common, though the allied form may also occur in one or
more of those countries and their islands, as it certainly
does on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. More
than this cannot now be said.
The present species was the emblematic bird of ancient
Athens, and the attributed favourite of the Goddess of
Wisdom, as the characteristic figures on sculptures and
coins abundantly prove. It ought, therefore, to have been
as well-known to all writers as a bird could be. I t has,
however, been unfortunate in its treatment by nomenelators.
Having been inextricably confounded by many ornithologists
with a perfectly distinct and much smaller European species,
named Strix passerina * by Linmeus, who was apparently
unacquainted with this larger bird, it has had a variety
of names applied to it. In Prof. Sundevall’s opinion it is
the Strix noctna of Scopoli, though his account of that bird
is meagre and inaccurate, but it is certainly not that described
under the same name by Retzius, as many have thought.
The Noctna glaux of Savigny properly refers to the allied
southern form, subsequently called, by Vieillot, S. persica,
by Risso, N. meridionalis, and, by the younger Le Vaillant,
S. numida. The northern bird was named S . nudipes by
Prof. Nilsson, but that epithet having been previously employed
for another species, he subsequently changed it to
psilodactyla. The generic term is also involved. Noetua
and Athene, both the names most commonly used, have been
preoccupied in Entomology. The type of Glaucidium, that
which was next imposed, is said to be a species not congeneric
with the present, and accordingly Carine remains to
be used.
The beak is yellowish-white; the hides very pale straw-
colour : the facial disk greyish-white, passing into brown on
the outer side of each eye ; chin, and sides of the neck,
below the ears, nearly white ; top of the head and neck
clove-brown, with numerous spots of greyish-white; the
back and wings clove-brown, with roundish white spots
arranged in several lines on the scapulars and wing-coverts,
and varied with other white spots partly concealed hy the
ends of the superincumbent feathers; primaries umber-
brown, barred with yellow-brown or wood-brown: the first
quill-featlier sh o rt; the second and fifth longer, and equal
in length; the third and fourth the longest, and also
equal : tail above clove-brown, barred with pale wood-brown;
* This again has been confounded with the North-American Nyctala acadicct
(see above, page 157, note), and in consequence the latter has been erroneously
said to inhabit also Europe, and the former the New World.