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Show 296 MR. ALSTON ON FEMALE DEER WITH HORNS. [Mar. 18, The common Barn-owl of the Viti Islands is Strix delicatula, a species so totally different that it is unnecessary to enter more fully upon these differences. Suffice it to remark that the wings and the tarsi are much longer in our new species. This latter comes somewhat nearer to the light phase of Strix novee hollandiee (sive personata). But that is altogether a stouter bird, the feet and beak being much stronger than in Strix oustaleti, whereas the tarsi and the wings are proportionally longer in the new species. Strix novee hollandiee has the whole tarsi feathered with a thick white down; in Strix oustaleti the lower half of the tarsus is almost naked, and the upper very thinly feathered. There are also many and very striking differences in the colours of the two birds. The minute whitish vermiculation on the upper parts of Strix novee hollandiee is entirely wanting in Strix oustaleti. The spots on the sides of the abdomen are more or less enlarged and bar-like in Strix novee hollandiee; they are of the same size and form as those on the breast and epigastrium in Strix oustaleti. The number of the dark bands in the primaries and the tail-feathers is six in Strix novae hollandiee, four in Strix oustaleti. The colours of the tail-feathers are very different in the two birds, the interstices being thickly mottled with brown and whitish in Strix novee hollandiee, fulvous and without any markings in Strix oustaleti. The apical part of the greater remiges is broadly mottled with whitish and brown in Strix novee hollandiee, whereas it is of a uniform dark blackish brown in Strix oustaleti. The existence of two species of Barn-owls in so small an island as Viti-Levu is a curious fact. The type specimens of this description are and will remain in the Museum Godeffroy at Hamburg. 2. O n Female Deer with Antlers. By E D W A R D R. ALSTON, F.L.S., F.Z.S., &c. [Received March 4, 1879.] The occasional abnormal development of antlers in female Deer (outside the genus Rangifer) presents some points of interest, as bearing on the arrangement of the family Cervidee, and on the probable evolutionary history of these weapons. M y attention has been lately turned to this subject by the record of such an instance in the Roedeer (Capreolus caprcea, Gray '), in the ' Field ' of the 18th January ; and I am indebted to the courtesy of the gentleman who shot it, Mr. John B. Fergusson, 1 I may here note that the n a m e europceus has been supposed to have priority over Gray's specific title, being sometimes quoted as from J. Brookes's 'Catalogue' of his Anatomical and Zootomical Museum (1830), a reference which has even found its way into Engelmann's ' Bibliotheca.' A copy of this list is preserved in the library of the Royal Society; and it proves to be merely a sale-catalogue, with no claim whatever to be regarded as a scientific publication. |