THE LONG-TUFTED OWL. 155 



large size and singular appearance, attracts the attention of 

 kites, crows, and other birds, which follow after it with 

 apparent astonishment. Hence it is sometimes made use of 

 to draw down the kite in her high flight, so that a falcon 

 may get above her, and despatch her. It is also sometimes 

 used in a cage, or otherwise confined, but visible, to attract 

 and enable the keepers to destroy those birds which plunder 

 the nests, and eat the young in pheasant preserves. Its 

 migration flight is high, and not much inferior to that of 

 the eagle, several of the characters of which it combines with 

 those of the more common owls. 



It is highly probable that many of those dismal sounds 

 which have been reported as at times issuing from rocks or 

 caves, or moaning along the solitary wastes, and which terror 

 has imputed to supernatural agents, have been nothing more 

 than the flight-cries of eagle-owls, which came and departed 

 (or died) unseen, but which were not silent or unoccupied 

 during the time of their sojourn. About thirty years ago, 

 there was an unwonted and very dismal sound heard occa- 

 sionally on a wide and wild moor on the east of Scotland, to 

 the total suspension of all walking by night the more so, 

 that the place bore the impress of ancient camps and battles, 

 and contained the bones of some modern suicides, which then 

 and there were not allowed churchyard burial, though the 

 ground is not consecrated, and there is no burial service. 

 But if we could keep these birds when they do come, dismal 

 as their sounds are, they would make a most interesting 

 addition to our ornithology. In Norway, where they abound, 

 they are guardian angels from the countless thousands of 

 lemmings, which they destroy in the desolating marches of 

 those destructive creatures. 



THE LONG-TUFTED OWL (StriX 



That is unquestionably the finest of our resident owls ; and 



