black of the ear-tufts. Facial circle continuous black, except across the foreneck; chin, throat, and jugulum pure immaculate white, to the roots of the feathers. Beneath, white prevails, but the yellowish-rufous is prevalent on the sides of the breast, and shows as the base color wherever the feathers are disarranged. The sides of the breast, sides, and flanks have numerous sharply defined narrow transverse bars of brownish-black; anteriorly these are finer and more ragged, becoming coalesced so as to form conspicuous, somewhat longitudinal, black spots. On the lower tail-coverts the bars are distant, though not less sharply defined. The abdomen medially is scarcely maculate white. Legs and toes plain ochraceous-white. [Illustration: =6886= ⅓ _Bubo virginianus._] Wing-formula, 2, 3–4–1, 5. Wing, 14.50; tail, 8.20; culmen, 1.10; tarsus, 2.00; middle toe, 2.00. ♀ (12,065, Maryland; R. J. Pollard). General appearance same as the male. Black blotches on head above and nape less conspicuous, the surface being mottled like the back, etc.; primary coverts with three well-defined narrow pure black bands; primaries with only six bands, these broader than in the male; secondaries with only five bands; tail with but six dark bands, these very much narrower than the light ones. Tibiæ and tarsi with sparse transverse bars of dusky. Wing-formula, 3, 2, 4–1=5. Wing, 16.00; tail, 9.00; culmen, 1.20; tarsus, 2.20; middle toe, 2.10. _Young._ Wings and tail as in adult. Downy plumage of head and body ochraceous, with detached, rather distant, transverse bars of dusky. (12,062, Washington, D. C., May 20, 1859; C. Drexler.) HAB. Eastern North America, south of Labrador; west to the Missouri; south through Atlantic region of Mexico to Costa Rica; Jamaica (GOSSE). Localities: (?) Oaxaca (SCL. 1859, 390; possibly var. _arcticus_); Guatemala (SCL. Ibis, I. 222); Jamaica (GOSSE, 23); Texas (DRESSER, Ibis, 1865, 330, breeds); Costa Rica (LAWR. IX, 132). Specimens from the regions indicated vary but little, the only two possessing differences of any note being one (58,747,[30] ♂) from Southern Illinois, and one (33,218, San Jose; J. Carmiol) from Costa Rica. The first differs from all those from the eastern United States in much deeper and darker shades of color, the rufous predominant below, the legs and crissum being of quite a deep shade of this color; the transverse bars beneath are also very broad and pure black. This specimen is more like Audubon’s figure than any other, and may possibly represent the peculiar style of the Lower Mississippi region. The Costa Rica bird is remarkable for the predominance of the rufous on all parts of the plumage; the legs, however, are whitish, as in specimens from the Atlantic coast of the United States. These specimens cannot, however, be considered as anything else than merely local styles of the _virginianus_, var. _virginianus_. Bubo virginianus, var. arcticus, SWAINS. WESTERN GREAT HORNED OWL.