"What a splendid bird!" was our remark to an individual who practised at the bar. "Yes, fine enough when stuffed. But, you see, we had to do it, he got so nasty." We observed that the plumage did not indicate it. The man replied, quickly: "Oh, there was no rummage in him. We kept him tethered. All the rats and mice we ketched was given him—and the way he'd chuck 'em in wasn't slow! But, as I said, he got so nasty." We asked for an explanation. "Well, you see, he got so nasty that, just as lief as not, he'd put his talents right into your hand when you was afeeding him. You see, the bird got so nasty that he was mean." We replied that it was the first instance of that kind of misdirected "talents" that we had ever heard of, and we agreed with him that it wasn't nice at all. "Nice?
Fig. 9.—The Snowy Owl (Nyctea nivea).
Not much!" he rejoined. "As I said, the bird got too nasty, so we killed him, and had him stuffed." He told me the bird was caught in Warren County, and that they used to be plentiful a good many years ago.
Probably, November, 1876, will go down in ornithological history as the time of the famous southward raid of the snowy owls. Clad as they are to resist the arctic cold, and such excellent hunters—whether by day or by night—it would seem that want of food must have started these birds on their journey. Could the severe arctic winter, so disastrous to Captain Nare's expedition, have made this scarcity? It was during a pleasant autumn that these birds came upon us. There must have been some sixty shot in my own vicinity. A string of thirteen hung by a store in New York; there were many in the markets. One taxidermist in this city, it is said, had sixty left with him to be stuffed. Another in Philadelphia had about as many. As early as September flocks of ten to fifteen were seen in different places in Massachusetts. A number were shot in the city of Boston,
