280 THE TAWNY OWL. 



and then whole weeks would elapse before I could hear the pleasing 

 notes again. At present, however, this favourite warbler is on the 

 increase. He who befriends the tawny owl, and loves to have it 

 near his mansion, may easily make a habitation for it, provided there 

 be a wood at hand, with full-grown ash trees in it. But no wood, 

 no tawny owl ; Point a* argent, point de Suisse, as the saying has it. 

 On examining his ash timber, he will occasionally find a tree with a 

 particular fungus on it yellow when growing and black when ripe. 

 But more of this, perhaps, another time, should I ever offer to the 

 public a short paper on the cause and prevention of dry rot : a mis- 

 nomer, by the way. When this fungus falls to the ground, after the 

 rains of winter have set in, the bark on which it has grown shows 

 such faint traces of a change, that an eye not accustomed to look for 

 these things would scarcely notice the distempered part. By means, 

 however, of a hammer and a chisel applied to the spot, you are 

 soon let into the secret ; and you find the wood, in the quarter 

 where the fungus appeared, of a texture soft and altered, and some 

 what approaching to that of cork. Here, then, you can readily 

 form an excavation large enough to contain a pair of tawny owls. 

 In the year 1831, I pointed out to Mr. Ord (the elegant and 

 scientific biographer of poor Wilson) just such an ash tree as that 

 which I have described. It was above two feet in diameter, and 

 there was a fungus on the western side of it. After I had excavated 

 nearly half way through the tree, I found a portion of the wood more 

 tainted than the rest ; so, putting a longer handle into the socket of 

 the chisel, I worked in the direction which it took, until, most un- 

 expectedly, I came to the nest of a titmouse. The bird, like the 

 Portuguese at Mindanao, had evidently taken possession of the 

 tenement through an aperture from the eastward, now closed up with 

 living bark ; while I, like the Spaniards, had arrived at the same 

 place, by pursuing a course from the westward. If I might judge 

 by the solid appearance of the bark, I should say that, some fifty or 

 sixty years ago, a branch must have been blown off from this eastern 

 side of the bole ; and there the rain had found an entrance, and had 

 gradually formed a cavity. The titmouse, judging it a convenient 

 place, had chosen it for her nidification ; and, probably, had resorted 

 to it every year, until the growing wood at the mouth of the orifice 

 had contracted the entrance, and, at last, closed it up for ever 



