166 ACCIPITRES. 



mankind ; and in fact wants nothing but not to be perse- 

 cuted, in order to make it both familiar and useful. The 

 amiable, eloquent, and enterprising Mr. Waterton, of Walton 

 Hall, has taken a colony of owls under his protection ; and 

 his paper on the subject in No. 23 of Loudon's Magazine of 

 Natural History, is equally curious in its facts, and delightful 

 in its spirit and naivete. About 1814, despite the alarms of 

 the old housekeeper, he founded a colony of owls over the 

 ancient gateway ; for, whatever might be the fear of others, 

 it is not to be supposed that he who (vide his most romantic 

 Wanderings) in the wilds of Guiana, and to the admiration of 

 men of all colours, rode triumphantly ashore on the back of 

 a cayman, bridling the formidable reptile with its fore paws, 

 would be timid of owls at his own threshold in England. 



The owls have multiplied in a truly patriarchal manner, 

 nestling not only in the original ivy, but in the neighbouring 

 trees ; and so familiar, without being either tamed or trained, 

 that all their habits can be studied with the utmost ease; and 

 those habits are evidently much more their natural ones than 

 when they hide themselves on the approach of man. They 

 admit of being visited in their nests and perching places, 

 upon which latter they repose in an erect posture. They 

 utter their stridulous cry, morning, evening, and all night 

 long, whatever be the state of the moon ; but up to the pub- 

 lication of his paper (January 1832) Mr. Waterton's owls 

 had not hooted, though like others they hiss and snap with 

 their beaks when violence is offered to them. The snoring 

 noise is the complaint of the young for food ; and the hearing 

 of it in winter led Mr. W. to the discovery that owls have 

 very late broods. It used to be repeated from one to another 

 that owls snored in their sleep, but the structure of the 

 breathing apparatus in birds is against this hypothesis, and 

 corroborative of Mr. Waterton's observation. 



These owls, as is the case with domestic birds, do not 



