NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 115 



return loaded, should not, I think, be passed over in silence. As 

 they take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in their claws 

 to their nest; but, as the feet are necessary in their ascent under 

 the tiles, they constantly perch first on the roof of the chancel, and 

 shift the mouse from their claws to their bill, that their feet may be 

 at liberty to take hold of the plate on the wall as they are rising under 

 the eaves. 



White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at all ; 

 all that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood kinds. 

 The white owl does indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous manner ; 

 and these menaces well answer the intention of intimidating ; for I 

 have known a whole village up in arms on such an occasion, imagining 

 the church-yard to be full of goblins and spectres. White owls also 

 often scream horribly as they fly along ; from this screaming probably 

 arose the common people's imaginary species of screech-owl, which they 

 superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The 

 plumage 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 mention 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 an hen's egg. I 

 have known an owl of this species live a full year without any water. 

 Perhaps the case may be 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 com- 

 mand the smallest degree of sound or noise. I am, &c. 



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

 twentieth, and twenty-first letters have been published already in the 

 " Philosophical Transactions ; " but as nicer observation has furnished 



* There is perhaps not a more beautiful instance of the evidence of design, than 

 that exhibited in the whole structure of an owl ; and as a part of it the wing, 

 which is constructed for a light, buoyant, and noiseless flight. The feathers are 

 altogether soft and downy. They have the webs with the plumules disunited at 

 the tips, and either remarkably pliable, or separated like the teeth of a saw, 

 allowing a free passage to the air; or they possess a pliability to yield to its 

 pressure, and thus give a light or sailing motion and a noiseless flight. 



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