THE BARN OWL 143 
though your performance were worthy of all condemnation. Yet 
he is a very handsome and most amusing bird, more worthy of being 
domesticated as a pet than many others held in high repute. Taken 
young from the nest, he is soon on familiar terms with his owner, 
recognizes him by a flapping of wings and a hiss whenever he 
approaches, clearing his premises of mice, and showing no signs of 
pining at the restriction placed on his liberty. Give him a bird, 
and he will soon show that, though contented with mice, he quite 
appreciates more refined fare. Grasping the body with his talons, 
he deliberately plucks off all the large feathers with his beak, tears 
off the head, and swallows it at one gulp, and then proceeds to 
devour the rest piecemeal. In a wild state his food consists mainly 
of mice, which he swallows whole, beetles, and sometimes fish, 
which he catches by pouncing on them in the water. 
The service which the Barn Owl renders to the agriculturist, by 
its consumption of rats and mice, must be exceedingly great, yet 
it is little appreciated. ‘“ When it has young”’,says Mr. Waterton, 
“it will bring a mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes. 
But in order to have a proper idea of the enormous quantity of mice 
which this bird destroys, we must examine the pellets which it 
ejects from its stomach in the place of its retreat. Every pellet 
contains from four to seven skeletons of mice. In sixteen months 
from the time that the apartment of the Owl on the old gateway 
was cleared out, there has been a deposit of above a bushel of pellets.” 
The plumage of the Barn Owl is remarkable for its softness, its 
delicacy of pencilling on the upper parts and its snowy whiteness 
below. Its face is perfectly heart-shaped during life, but when the 
animal is dead becomes circular. The female is slightly larger than 
her mate, and her colours are somewhat darker. The nest of the 
Barn Owl is a rude structure placed in the bird’s daily haunt. The 
eggs vary in number, and the bird lays them at different periods, 
each egg after the first being hatched (partially at least) by the 
heat of the young birds already in being. That this is always 
the case it would not be safe to assert, but that it is so sometimes 
there can be no doubt. The young birds are ravenous eaters and 
proverbially ugly; when craving food they make a noise re- 
sembling a snore. The Barn or White Owl is said to be the 
most generally diffused of all the tribe, being found in almost all 
latitudes of both hemispheres, and it appears to be everywhere 
an object of terror to the ignorant. A bird of the night, the 
time when evil deeds are done, it bespeaks for itself an evil 
reputation ; making ruins and hollow trees its resort, it becomes 
associated with the gloomiest legends ; uttering its discordant note 
during the hours of darkness, it is rarely heard save by the benighted 
traveller, or by the weary watcher at the bed of the sick and 
dying ; and who more susceptible of alarming impressions than 
these ? It is therefore scarcely surprising that the common incident 
