230 THE WILD. 



Sir Emerson Tennent, in his elaborate volumes on 

 Ceylon, lately published, has alluded to a bird of night 

 which superstition invests with peculiar terrors. He thus 

 speaks of it. Like the whetsaw, it seems to be "vox et 

 prcBterea nihil." 



" Of the nocturnal oxcipitres the most remarkable is 

 the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired 

 the name of the ' Devil Bird.' The Singhalese regard it 

 literally with horror ; and its scream by night, in the 

 vicinity of a village, is bewailed as the harbinger of 

 approaching calamity." 



After alluding to another sound attributed to a bird, 

 but of which the authorship is involved in uncertainty, 

 he adds : — • 



" Mr Mitford, of the Ceylon Civil Service, to whom I 

 am indebted for many valuable notes relative to the birds 

 of the island, regards the identification of the Singhalese 

 Devil-bird as open to similar doubt : he says, * The Devil- 

 bird is not an owL I never heard it until I came to 

 Kornegalle, where it haunts the rocky hill at the back of 

 the Government-house. Its ordinary note is a magnificent 

 clear shout lilce that of a human being, and which can 

 be heard at a great distance, and has a fine effect in the 

 silence of the closing night. It has another cry, like that 

 of a hen just caught ; but the sounds which have earned 

 for it its bad name, and which I have heard but once to 

 perfection, are indescribable, the most appalling that 

 can be imagined, and scarcely to be heard without 

 shuddering ; I can only compare it to a boy in torture, 



