NOCTURNAL SOUNDS. 367 



Before I leave this subject I will extract from one 

 of Mr. Hill's letters to me an interesting note on 

 nocturnal forest sounds, heard in a very different part 

 of the island. The remarks with which it is prefaced 

 are in themselves interesting, as referring to a species 

 of Owl hitherto unrecorded. "The Eared Owl," 

 observes my friend, " which I had sent to me from 

 Manchester, was taken on the wooded mountain- 

 skirts forming the back-country of that and the ad- 

 joining parish of Trelawny. These back-mountains 

 are opened in detached clearings, and planted with 

 coffee, Indian corn, and esculent arums, and are 

 usually exceedingly infested with rats ; the cellular 

 limestone which protrudes through their rich vege- 

 table deposits being prodigious harbouring places for 

 those rodents. I find among my loose memoranda, 

 that a Mr. Walker, an overseer of a plantation situ- 

 ated among the furthest of the sugar settlements in 

 St. James's, mentioned to me that he had observed 

 narrowly the Brown Owl, and that he had acquainted 

 himself with its great diligence as a destroyer of 

 Rats. He had remarked a roost to which one of 

 them resorted ; and the extraordinary heaps of casts, 

 deposited at the root of the tree on which this Owl 

 usually devoured his prey, made piles of undigested 

 bones, among which Rats' teeth were conspicuously 



teeth arranged in two curved lines, whose convexity is forward 

 scarcely interrupted at their meeting angle. Tongue small ; posterior 

 half (or rather more) round and free ; anterior portion oblong, and 

 attached. Colour pale buff, studded with minute dark specks, irregu- 

 larly scattered ; accumulated in the form of bands across the legs and 

 thighs. A band of deep brown passes from the muzzle, through the 

 eye, and is lost about the middle of the side. (See Plate VII.) 

 K 4 



