14+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Who ! who ! who-o-o-oo are you ? " How that boy's heart did beat, 

 and how he ran, almost llew, cannot be told. It was still a long way 

 from home, but this was gained at last. He rushed into the house 

 (the folks were up-stairs), and, without reporting to them, he immedi- 

 ately threw himself face downward upon the lounge, and sobbed his 

 fright away, as little people often sensibly do. And now, if better 

 late than never, let it be honestly confessed : that boy for years enter- 

 tained a very owlish creed, built upon his own experience. He be- 

 lieved in a peculiar graveyard Strix. In fine, it may as well come 

 out he was a spiritualist, in the strictest, spookiest sense. 



The owls are intensely carnivorous. The diminutive ones will 

 feed largely upon insects, and some of the large kinds will eat them 

 occasionally. But Nature has made them for prowlers, and as such we 

 find them fond of flesh, fowl, and fish. So immense is their destruc- 

 tion of the smaller rodents, that they are worth millions to the agri- 

 culture of our country. They are the feathered Nimrods of the 

 night. Even the American hare, the rabbit wrongly called, falls an 

 easy victim. Some of the owls can fish, too. But whether hunting, 

 fowling, or fishing, they lack the style of doing it which belongs to 

 the falcon tribe ; and when out bugging it is but a bungling business 



Pig. 2. American Barn-Owl {Sti'ix flammea, Var. Americana). 



compared with the professional role of the insectivorous birds. Their 

 angling, too, is simply upon quiet waters. They cannot brave " the 

 mutinous winds 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault." In com- 

 mon with all the Raptores^ they catch their prey with the talons, not 

 with the beak. In eating birds the owl prefers to tear his prey in 

 piecemeal, but a small rodent is swallowed entire, being usually tossed 

 into the air to adjust its position, so that it may fall head first into 

 the bird's mouth. It disappears in one astonishing gulp. A second 

 gulp is usually needed, as the tail is often after the first left hanging 



