SCREECH OWL. 27 



the fore parts being devoured. At a little distance 

 from the bird lay, on the same mass, three eggs, in 

 no wise to be distinguished from those of a hen, in 

 form, size, or colour, save that they were scarcely 

 equal to the average size of hen's eggs. I may add 

 that, on emptying them afterwards, I found them to 

 contain only a fluid apparently homogeneous, glairy, 

 but turbid, like very thin paste. They were not 

 collected for sitting, neither being within six inches 

 of another. No sooner had Sam descended, than the 

 old Owl again appeared ; but, after flying round the 

 mouth of the pit, and settling for an instant on one 

 of the trees, she flew ofi* again ; and though, when we 

 had secured the young and eggs, we waited long in 

 expectation of her return, she came no more while 

 we remained. Having passed up the things by the 

 brier, the lad shinned up the tree without much 

 difficulty, and we proceeded home with our young 

 charge. On taking him out, I found him a strange 

 figure indeed : the head long, and sparingly clothed 

 with down ; the curved beak, with its flesh-coloured 

 cere ; the immense orbits of the eyes marked by 

 a white ring of small down, and the top and back of 

 the head, and all the body besides, thickly clothed 

 with white down of exquisite softness, strongly re- 

 minding me of a hair-dresser's powder-puff". The 

 tips of the wings displayed the budding quills, but they 

 bore the singular appearance of flesh-coloured tubes, 

 crowned with a divergent tuft of down. The hinder 

 parts were, as usual in young birds, large and pro- 

 tuberant, and there was not a vestige of a tail as yet. 

 The feet and legs were well developed, and the 



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