By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 33 



the hard breathing or snoring generally attributed to them, seems 

 to belong to the young birds alone, which give audible tokens of 

 their somnolency as you approach their nursery. There is one 

 remarkable habit in the nesting of this species related by Yarrell, 

 Hewitson, and others, and of which Mr. Marsh was on one occasion 

 an eye witness ; viz., that it does not lay its full complement of eggs 

 (usually four) in regular daily succession ; but that after hatching 

 two eggs, it will lay two more, the latter being hatched in due 

 course by the warmth of their elder brethren ; while a third laying 

 often ensues, which becomes hatched as the preceding, the same 

 nest thus containing at one time young birds in three separate stages 

 of advance towards maturity ; an admirable provision of nature as 

 Hewitson remarks, whereby the old birds are enabled the more 

 readily to supply the demands of their voracious progeny. 



If Ulysses and ^neas are to be accounted esi^ecially fortunate in 

 having their wanderings described by such able pens as those of 

 Ilomer and Virgil, we may in like manner congratulate the 'Barn* 

 owl, in having secured for itself the very able championship of Mr. 

 "Waterton, who has laboured most assiduously and with the power 

 which he can so well wield, to defend this much injured harmless 

 benefactor of mankind from the persecutions to which it is exposed 

 at the hands of the wanton, the thoughtless, and the ignorant. 

 Mr. Waterton has likewise induced this species to take up its abode 

 in a place he has especially provided for its accommodation in a 

 ruined ivy-covered retreat at Walton Hall, and here he delighted to 

 watch its movements ; and he declares he is amply repaid for the 

 pains he has taken to protect and encourage it by the enormous 

 quantity of mice which it destroys : from him we learn that when 

 it has young, it will bring a mouse to the nest every twelve or 

 fifteen minutes, and that above a bushel of pellets or castings was 

 cleared out from its retreat within sixteen months of its occupation 

 of it, each pellet containing the skeletons of from four to seven mice : 

 lie also discovered by constant and close attention to its habits, that 

 it will occasionally catch fish by plunging into the water, and 

 Bcizing its slippery victim in its claws. As a boy I possessed one 

 of these owls, which I kept in an aviary for a considerable time, and 



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