NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 149 



of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I 

 have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps 

 it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should 

 not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be 

 enabled to steal through the air unheard upon a nimble and 

 watchful quarry. 



While I am talking of owls, it may not be improper to men- 

 tion what I was told by a gentleman of the county of Wilts. 

 As they were grubbing a vast hollow pollard-ash that had 

 been the mansion of owls for centuries, he discovered at the 

 bottom a mass of matter that at first he could not account 

 for. After some examination he found that it was a 

 congeries of the bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and 

 bats) that had been heaping together for ages, being cast 

 up in pellets out of the crops of many generations of 

 inhabitants. For owls cast up the bones, fur, and feathers 

 of what they devour, after the manner of hawks. He 

 believes, he told me, that there were bushels of this kind of 

 substance. 



When brown owls hoot their throats swell as big as a 

 hen's egg. I have known an owl of this species live a full 

 year without any water. Perhaps the case may be the same 

 with all birds of prey. When owls fly they stretch out 

 their legs behind them as a balance to their large heavy 

 heads, for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears, 

 they must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes, I 

 presume, are necessary to collect every ray of light, and 

 large concave ears to command the smallest degree of sound 

 or noise. 



[It will be proper to premise here that the sixteenth, 

 eighteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first letters have been 



