280 THE TAWNY OWL. 



and then whole weeks would elapse before I could hear the pleasing 

 notes again. At present, however, this favourite warbler is on the ' 

 increase. He who befriends the tawny owl, and loves to have it 

 near his mansion, may easily make a habitation for it, provided there 

 be a wood at hand, with full-grown ash trees in it But no wood, 

 no tawny owl ; Point d" 1 argent, point de Sifisse, as the saying has it. 

 On examining his ash timber, he will occasionally find a tree with a 

 particular fungus on it yellow when growing and black when ripe. 

 But more of this, perhaps, another time, should I ever offer to the 

 public a short paper on the cause and prevention of dry rot : a mis- 

 nomer, by the way. When this fungus falls to the ground, after the 

 rains of winter have set in, the bark on which it has grown shows 

 such faint traces of a change, that an eye not accustomed to look for 

 these things would scarcely notice the distempered part. By means, 

 however, of a hammer and a chisel applied to the spot, you are 

 soon let into the secret; and you find the wood, in the quarter 

 where the fungus appeared, of a texture soft and altered, and some 

 what approaching to that of cork. Here, then, you can readily 

 form an excavation large enough to contain a pair of tawny owls. 

 In the year 1831, I pointed out to Mr. Ord (the elegant and 

 scientific biographer of poor Wilson) just such an ash tree as that 

 which I have described. It was above two feet in diameter, and 

 there was a fungus on the western side of it. After I had excavated 

 nearly half way through the tree, I found a portion of the wood more 

 tainted than the rest ; so, putting a longer handle into the socket of 

 the chisel, I worked in the direction which it took, until, most un- 

 expectedly, I came to the nest of a titmouse. The bird, like the 

 Portuguese at Mindanao, had evidently taken possession of the 

 tenement through an aperture from the eastward, now closed up with 

 living bark ; while I, like the Spaniards, had arrived at the same 

 place, by pursuing a course from the westward. If I might judge 

 by the solid appearance of the bark, I should say that, some fifty or 

 sixty years ago, a branch must have been blown off from this eastern 

 side of the bole ; and there the rain had found an entrance, and had 

 gradually formed a cavity. The titmouse, judging it a convenient 

 place, had chosen it for her nidification ; and, probably, had resorted 

 to it every year, until the growing wood at the mouth of the orifice 

 had contracted the entrance, and, at last, closed it up for ever 



