4 8 



keepers have discovered that in destroying owls they are 

 murdering their best friends, but as long as women 

 persist in disfiguring themselves by wearing owls' heads 

 and wings as ornaments, and dealers will give a price 

 for these birds to make up into screens (for which they 

 find a ready sale), so long will the idiotic destruction of 

 owls continue. 



" To revert to the collections at Lilford, we have a large 

 number of caged birds of many different species, amongst 

 which I may specially mention as sweet singers, a blue 

 rock-thrush that we took from the nest on the coast 

 of Sardinia nearly twelve years ago, and two of a small 

 dark race of blackcap from Madeira, that have passed 

 five winters at Lilford, and are both singing in the room 

 in which I am now writing. 



" I must not forget the very beautiful Indian birds 

 commonly known as ' shama,' of which I have two. The 

 natural notes of this bird are very varied and powerful, 

 many of them extremely sweet, and they readily imitate 

 the songs of other species, and indeed almost any other 

 sound that they can compass. To those of you who c&re 

 about birds, and are not acquainted with the shama, 

 I may say that this bird is larger than a redbreast, to 

 which it has a certain resemblance in shape ; but it has a tail 

 longer in relative proportion than that of our common 

 magpie. Roughly speaking, the upper parts of the plumage, 

 head and throat, are glossy black, the breast of a tawny 

 orange colour, and the long tail black and white. No 



