OWL. 



379 



for instance, they are said to nestle in the rocks, and 

 to form a sort of nest of twigs and leaves, in which 

 they deposit eggs to the number of seven or eight. 

 In Europe, however, they are most abundant in the 

 neighbourhood of human dwellings ; their nests are 

 in holes of walls and trees, or under the eaves of 

 buildings ; and they are contented with the natural 

 shelter of such places, without being at the trouble of 

 constructing any formal nest. In Europe too their 

 eggs are far less numerous, being from two to four, 

 and very rarely the latter number. The young re- 

 main a long time in the nesting place, and during 

 that time the old ones are most assiduous in supply- 

 ing them with food. They issue out alternately on 

 the hunt, beat over the fields with the regularity and 

 vigilance of spaniels ; and when they see a mouse 

 stirring, or any other prey suited to their purpose, 

 they instantly drop down upon it, and as instantly 

 secure it. 



It is highly probable that no animal whatever regu- 

 larly approaches the habitations of man, and remains 

 there, without being of some singularly essential ser- 

 vice to him. There is little doubt that this is the 

 case with the barn owl, and there is as little doubt 

 that if the encouragement of the bird were in propor- 

 tion to its merits, it might be rendered a highly orna- 

 mental as well as a useful bird. Much light has been 

 thrown upon this subject by Mr. Waterton of Walton 

 Hall, a gentleman of some eccentricity, but possessed 

 of most commendable zeal in the discovery of natural 

 objects, and most delightful and glowing eloquence in 

 the description of them. Mr. Waterton is well known 

 for one of the most graphic and glowing books that 

 was ever produced by a human pen, namely, his 

 " Wanderings in the Wilds of Guiana," in which he 

 encountered hardships, and met with adventures be- 

 yond the ken of ordinary mortals ; and which, were 

 it not for his known acuteness and veracity, might 

 fairly be set down as the fictions of a traveller. There 

 can be no doubt, however, that Mr. Waterton rode 

 triumphantly from the flood of Essequibo, upon the 

 back of a cayman, in presence of admiring men of 

 all colours, who had contrived to draw out this Ame- 

 rican leviathan with a hook ; and there can be as 

 little question that the same delightful enthusiast in 

 the wonders of nature out-Herculised Hercules, in 

 grappling with the full-grown coulacanara in its den, 

 lodging the fanged monster in his wallet, and causing 

 it to "bleed like an ox," on the following day. These 

 matters are beyond all scepticism ; and it will readily 

 be admitted that one who could ride the cayman and 

 take the coulacanara captive might do what he listed 

 with any owl that ever winged the air. 



About the year 1814, Mr. Waterton resolved to es- 

 tablish a colony of owls, among the ivy which adorns 

 the ancient gateway of his delightful mansion. The 

 old house-keeper was up in arms at the prospect of 

 such neighbours, whom she considered as of unearthly 

 aspect and voice ; but the wrath of an old woman is 

 nothing to a man who has rode a cayman and caught a 

 coulacanara ; and, therefore, the adventurous Lord of 

 the Manor of Walton willed that the barn owls 

 should have a locus standi in the ancient gateway ; sic 

 voluit, sic fecit the colony of the owls was instantly 

 established. Nor did they fail in gratitude to so gifted 

 and so considerate a patron. They increased and 

 multiplied as if Walton Hall had been the very Goshen 

 of barn owls. Their progeny speedily filled the ivy, 

 and extended into the trees iii the vicinity. They felt 



quite at home, secure under so kind a protector, and 

 probably demeaned themselves with more gratitude 

 of heart than if they had been mewed'up in cages, and 

 fed upon the stale offal of beeves, instead of the recent 

 and racy carcases of well-fed mice. They were, in 

 short, very speedily on terms of the greatest famili- 

 arity, and received visiters both at their nesting places 

 and their perches without the least apprehension. In 

 consequence of this feeling of security, they allowed 

 their habits, both out-door and domestic, to be studied 

 with an ease and certainty which could not have been 

 exercised under any other circumstances. In conse- 

 quence of this, it was ascertained that, as is the case with 

 the Peters, they repose with the axis of the body nearly 

 in a vertical position. Neither are they sparing with 

 their music, which, though a little discordant to some 

 ears, is doubtless the best they can afford. They 

 utter their stridulent cry morning and evening, and 

 at some seasons the live-long night, despite the varying 

 phases of the moon, which cannot, of course, be pre- 

 sumed to have much influence upon such sapient 

 birds. During the course of eight years which, 

 though short of twice a tithe of the beleaguering of 

 Ilium ere it yielded to the Greeks of its time, they 

 had not once hooted ; and on this part of the subject 

 Mr. Waterton is at issue with that great Boreal 

 Theban in birds and beasts, Sir William Jardine, of 

 Jardine Hall, who maintains that barn owls do hoot ; 

 but as, by his own confession, he shot them in the fact, 

 nobody could, of course, bring the individuals to the 

 cxperimentum crucis. Mr. Waterton's owls, however, 

 did not submit to indignity in that passive manner 

 which is evinced by some owls in human shape ; for, 

 upon any insult being offered to them, they hissed like 

 serpents, and snapped like rat-traps. They also were 

 in the habit of uttering a snoring sound ; but the 

 cause of this snoring was the very antipodes of that 

 which lulls to sleep, being the complaint of the young 

 when hunger wrung their stomachs, and every body 

 knows that hunger is the least sleepy affection, both 

 of man and beast. The researches of Mr. Waterton 

 into the natural history of this domesticated colony of 

 owls are of great value ; and they are not of greater 

 value in any other respect than inasmuch to show that 

 snoring, on the part of a barn owl, is anything but a 

 concomitant of sleep. It is only done under the 

 sleepless feeling on the part of the young to which 

 we have alluded ; and, therefore, any one who wishes 

 to have an owl for a bed-fellow, has nothing more to 

 do than give it due infarction for supper, and it will 

 sleep as sound as a top, until the craving of its maw 

 sets it snoring in the morning. 



In endeavouring to prevent any deficiency of their 

 numbers, those owls are labouring for the production 

 of more owls early and late; and in the general lo- 

 cality to which we have alluded, they drudge at their 

 family duties in the fogs as late as the month of De- 

 cember. This philo-progenitation, though it may not 

 tally exactly with the dogmas of the phrenologists, is a 

 sort of constructive proof that" the owls know the eco- 

 nomy of the world, and that the world could not be 

 carried on without them ; and Mr. Waterton's obser- 

 vations afford other proofs that, without the diligent 

 fagging of their beaks and claws, mice might, per- 

 chance, shake the stability of the system of the world, 

 as Homer, in his Batrachamyomachia, once alleged 

 they did, in the case of the croakers of the fens, 

 When the owls have their broods astirring, Mr. Wa- 

 terton estimates that from four to five mice are brought 



