SPORT IN BUTE. 197 



is answered, perhaps, by some inner second of our own. 

 Even the wild screech of the white owl, as it flits stealthily 

 and rapidly along, has a power over us peculiarly its own ; 

 and one is amazed that so true a poet as Cowper could class 

 the call of these honoured sages as " even beneath the harsh 

 tones of the jay, the pye, the daw." Surely he could never 

 have listened to them under the canopy of heaven, but have 

 only caught the sound from his own drawing-room, with all 

 the curtains closed. 



The country around this venerable castle seems especially 

 adapted to rear both white and brown owls. A mixture of 

 cultivated and waste land, interspersed with woody dells, old 

 ruins, and hollow trees, ought to have attracted them from the 

 mainland coast opposite, where they always breed ; yet, 

 though constantly watching, I have never seen or heard 

 either of the more common species, 1 while the rarest (the 

 short-eared owl) twice unexpectedly presented herself on 

 Kames Hill when I was ranging for grouse. 



About the beginning of August 1864, I was examining 

 the ground with a view to the 12th, and my dogs " poked up " 

 this owl, when she flew a little distance and perched on the 

 top of a bing of stones capping a heathery mound. My 

 youngest son, a schoolboy, was my only companion, and of 

 course wished me to go home for a gun while he watched 

 the owl. Not having a specimen in my collection, I was 

 much tempted, but finally decided that, as the bird would 

 most likely haunt the place, we would always give the owl's 

 cairn a trial when grouse-shooting near it. All the early 

 part of last season I. never passed the mound without a close 

 look-out; but the searches became more careless each suc- 

 ceeding time, and at last were omitted altogether. On the 

 morning of the 4th of September of the following year, thir- 

 teen months after we first saw this rare bird, I was after 



1 Some time after the above was penned, a white or barn owl took possession 

 of the garden-wall ivy the only one I have seen in Bute. 



