22 ACCIPITRES. STRIGIDyE. 



ground, where it lay helpless. It was cross all the- 

 time I had it, snapping the beak loudly, and strik- 

 ing out as endeavouring to seize the hand ; utter- 

 ing now and then a shrill wail, most plaintive to 

 hear. The globular head, and round full eyes, over 

 which the nictitating membrane was constantly 

 being drawn, gave the living bird an odd appear- 

 ance. On dissecting it I found in the stomach re- 

 mains of mice and elytra of small beetles. 



From these instances we can pretty well infer the 

 food of the present species to consist largely of 

 shelled insects, as well as lizards and small mamma- 

 lia. For a while I knew not what to make of a state- 

 ment of Robinson's, that in his male he found 

 " nothing but some particles of maize ; " as also that 

 in another, with " the remains of scarabs," there 

 was " some guinea-corn, and maize." But I am in- 

 formed that this Owl is known to enter dove-cotes, 

 and devour the young pigeons ; the grain, therefore, 

 in these specimens was probably in the stomachs of 

 their prey, and remained in the Owls after the prey 

 had been dissolved, because the stomach of a rapa- 

 cious bird refuses to digest vegetable food. It would 

 probably have been cast up, if the birds had sur- 

 vived. 



I know not whether this is the species that Mr. 

 Hill means when he says, in " Notes of a Year," 

 published in the Companion to the Jamaica Alma- 

 nack, for 1840, "After sunset [in evenings in Au- 

 gust] the Brown Owl, seated on the dead limb of 

 a tree in some savanna, makes little circuits of about 

 thirty feet diameter, and returns to perch again. I 



