Owls. 115 



to pay so much a head for all the "vermin" his 

 keeper can procure. But that farmers should 

 join in the slaughter is curious, and shows most 

 lamentable ignorance ; yet many of them will re- 

 morselessly shoot an owl whenever they have an 

 opportunity, under the mistaken idea that it will 

 destroy their pigeons, and utterly regardless of 

 the fact that it is doing its best to free their 

 land of rats and mice. 



Under these circumstances we are pleased to 

 find that so high an authority as Lord Lilford, 

 the President of the British Ornithologists 7 Union, 

 has taken up the cudgels in defence of the owl, 

 and his remarks, which are to be found in a 

 recent number of his "Coloured Figures of the 

 Birds of the British Islands," are so trenchant 

 and to the point that they should have the widest 

 possible circulation, and therefore we make no 

 apology for quoting them very fully : he says : 



' ' I am glad to believe that the minds of game- 

 preservers and gamekeepers are gradually awaken- 

 ing to the fact that in destroying owls in general, 

 and this species (the barn owl) in particular, they 

 are committing acts of the most egregious folly, 

 not only as regards the birds which are the 

 special objects of their care and protection, but 

 also from an agricultural point of view, for these 

 owls not only destroy enormous numbers of rats, 

 mice, and voles, but also take many sparrows and 

 other seed-eating birds from their nocturnal 

 resorts. The stolid and unenlightened gamekeeper 



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