118 



IN NATURE'S WAYS 



The floor of the roomy loft is deeply covered by the 

 remains of feasts, left for many long years, bones 

 crunching horribly underfoot. Gilbert White has a 

 note of a hollow ash tree which had been the mansion 

 of owls for centuries, and how at the bottom was 

 found a vast collection of bones, bushels upon bushels 

 " the bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and bats) 

 that had been heaping together for ages, being cast 

 up in pellets out of the crops of many generations of 

 inhabitants. For owls cast up the bones, fur, and 

 feathers of what they 

 devour." 



In cold wintry weather 

 owls sleep much, for mice 

 are scarce ; but in the 

 summer we always find 

 they have a well-stocked 

 larder, and there will be a 

 great pile of freshly killed 

 mice at the entrance of 

 the place where the young 

 are cradled. They take the 

 house-mice which live in 

 hundreds in the farmer's 

 old barns, the long-tailed 

 mice of the meadows, the 

 reddish mice of the corn- 

 fields, with mice of the 

 woods, and the little 

 shrew-mice which, though 

 taken, are not eaten, 

 having an unpleasant 

 flavour. 

 The pellet of fur and 



Tke church owl mattes n excellent churchwarden bonOS is about the size of a 



