the h.o. potential is that the shell correction δE ( γ, p ) as a function of the smoothing range γ shows a wide plateau in which the plateau condition is fulfilled. More precisely, the fulfillment of the plateau condition is valid if at the same time the values belonging to the plateau are practically independent of the p value used. It was observed that the plateau condition is fulfilled for h.o. potential. Since γ and p are technical parameters of the smoothing procedure and they have no physical meaning, it is natural to expect that the definition of the smoothed quantities should not depend strongly on these values. Therefore, the shell correction calculated for the h.o. potential is well defined. This nice feature of the h.o. potential is related to the fact that this potential has only bound states (even at high positive energy values). For potentials which are similar to the harmonic oscillator potential e.g. the Nilsson potential we can always find regions for γ where the plateau condition is fulfilled [12, 21]. Since these potentials have only bound states (infinitely many) and no continuum the ending of the bound states does not spoil the picture. However a more realistic single particle potential has a discrete spectrum with finite number of bound states e$_{i}$ < 0 and a continuum of scattering states with E > 0 energy. The full level density in this case is a sum of the level densities of the discrete states g$_{d}$ ( E ) and that of the scattering states g$_{c}$ ( E ) forming the continuum Now the smooth level density has to be calculated again with the prescription of Eq.(9). It was realized by Brack and Pauli[21] that for this case the plateau condition can not be satisfied since the δE ( γ, p ) curves, what we call plateau curves do not have wide plateaus, where Eq.(19) is fulfilled. They searched for the minima δE ( γ$_{p}$, p ) of the plateau curves for each p values and introduced the concept of local plateau condition . At the minima i.e. at γ = γ$_{p}$ Eq.(19) is certainly satisfied. An additional requirement of the local plateau condition IV. GENERALIZED STRUTINSKI PROCEDURE FOR SPECTRA WITH CON- TINUUM g ( E ) = g$_{d}$ ( E ) + g$_{c}$ ( E ) . (20) ∂δE ( γ, p ) ∂γ = 0 (19) 7