Owls. 117 



well be imagined ; I have seen an old pair bring 

 food to their brood seventeen times in half an 

 hour from a rickyard near their nest." 



Every right-minded man will sympathise with 

 the writer in his concluding sentences, which are 

 as follows : 



" A great number of these and other owls are 

 massacred and sold to be made into fire-screens 

 and plumes for ladies' hats, barbarities upon 

 which I can hardly trust myself to enlarge. The 

 bird-manglers who devote themselves to this 

 branch of art, almost invariably put glass eyes 

 of the wrong colour into the distorted faces of 

 their victims, and in every way shock all the 

 better feelings of our human nature." 



We have little doubt that the constant perse- 

 cution suffered by these extremely useful birds, 

 and the consequent diminution in their numbers, 

 has much to do with the plague of rats and mice 

 from which so many parts of the country are at 

 present, and have long been, suffering. This is 

 a plague which, if owls were encouraged instead 

 of being destroyed, they would doubtless do much 

 to mitigate ; but at present the unfortunate birds 

 have no chance, their very endeavour leading to 

 their destruction. For example, we were told by 

 a farmer in a highly preserved district that his 

 stacks, being attacked by numberless rats and 

 mice, attracted, as he expressed it, all the owls in 

 the neighbourhood; the unfortunate birds, in 

 their tura, attracted the keepers, and were every 



