488 On Birds from the higher Mountains uf Nyika. 



supplied me with the following interesting account of its 

 capture : — 



''This Owl {Bubo verreauxi) was obtained at Emkiseni, 

 about 4000 ft. alt.^ on the Upper Kasitu river^ 5 days' 

 journey S.W. of Deep Bay, in June 1895. Some account 

 of how it came into my possession may be of interest. 



'^ Having occasion to visit Perembi, one of the most 

 northerly Angoni chiefs, I had camped in a bottom a mile or 

 so below his village — Emkiseni, which is situated on a bare, 

 wind-swept hillside, bitterly cold at this time of year. 



" A night in this bottom drove us to seek shelter still 

 lower down to get out of the wind, and we shifted our camp 

 into a clump of huge fig-trees, knotted and gnarled with age 

 and full of hollows. 



'' Here one of my Wahenga noticed a streak of guano iu 

 the mouth of a hollow in one of the trees, and climbing up 

 to it he peered in : he was greeted with a roaring hiss and a 

 glimpse of a pair of eyes gleaming in the darkness of the 

 hollow, and in his terror and hurry to get away he almost 

 fell out of the tree. Another man then went up, prepared to 

 encounter some such bird as an Owl, or perhaps a cat or a 

 genet ; and he, after a struggle with the bird, in which he got 

 clawed and bitten, pulled out this Owl and brought her down, 

 she having in her clenched talons the remains of a broken 

 egg. Another egg was taken from the tree intact ; this I 

 blew, and found to be addled, as also was the egg broken by 

 the bird. 



" I then killed the Owl with a dose of strychnine and 

 skinned her — not, however, without considerable qualms of 

 conscience ; she looked plaintively reproachful, almost 

 human, too, with her large dark eyes and pink eyelids. 



" A dozen or so of Perembi's wives watched me at work 

 with interest and awe, sitting humped-up in their cow-hide 

 cloaks in front of my tent. Hundreds of men, too, would 

 have done the same, but were hustled off by my own people 

 to a respectful distance, when they sat down and lined the 

 hillside above us, row upon row. 



"The Owl proved to be extraordinarily fat, quite the 



