Manchester Mevioirs, Vol hi. (191 2), No. 8. 9 



Mr. Meade-Waldo informed Saunders that the Little 

 Owl frequents lawns in the evening in search of earth- 

 worms, and others have noticed that the bird will eat 

 worms. It would be practically impossible for the owl 

 to devour a worm without taking into its stomach some 

 of the ingested leaf-mould and soil which was passing 

 through the worm's alimentary canal. This must be got 

 rid of b\' the owl, and what more natural than that it 

 should be regurgitated with other rejectamenta? The 

 sand was actually inside the skulls of birds and small 

 mammals within the pellets, mingled with mammalian 

 hair. 



These Egyptian Owls, judging by the pellets I 

 examined, seem to be less insectivorous than ours. 

 Mr. Oldfield Thomas kindly looked over a 'i&w of the 

 bones, and recognised the teeth of the musk shrew, 

 Crocidura religiosa, of ArvicantJiis variegatus, and the 

 Egyptian form of the house mouse, Miis niusculus 

 orientalis. There were also present several skulls of a 

 passerine bird, almost certainly the house sparrow, and 

 fragments of the skulls of an insectivorous soft-billed 

 bird. The ubiquitous Passer domcsticus is found amongst 

 the tombs of Luxor. 



It was interesting to note the reddish, sandy, or 

 isabelline colour of the mammalian hair in these Nile-side 

 pellets. 



Insect remains were comparatively infrequent in the 

 pellets, but in a number were the mandibles and other 

 appendages of the false scorpion, Galeodes arabs, C. L. 

 Koch. I am indebted to Mr. A. S. Hirst for the identifi- 

 cation of the species. The house mice were in the 

 greatest number, but the shrew remains were numerous. 

 This suggests another possible explanation of the 

 presence of the sand, which, however, is practically the 



