5074 THE ZooLoGIst—SEPTEMBER, 1876. 
The mother flew in my face and hit me with her wings, using all the little 
artifices that the quail and partridge know so well how to employ, to draw 
me away; while her brood, seven or eight in number, nimbly ran and hid 
themselves in the dense grass and among the stones.” 
We have always felt a weakness for owls. By the American 
Indians these birds are regarded with much superstition; the rule 
being, the smaller the owl the bigger the medicine. Glaucidium 
Californicum of Sclater, the tiniest of all the American species, is 
the “medicine” or “death owl” of the Indians. Mr. Keast Lord 
had an opportunity of observing this little species nesting in 
Vancouver Island, and has written an interesting account of its 
habits. But, besides these pigmies, there are in the American list 
such splendid owls as the Virginian great horned owl, and the 
beautiful snowy owl. With but few exceptions, owls are solitary 
recluses. It is not often that more than a pair are seen together. In 
this country, in the winter time, sometimes as many as a score of 
the shorteared owl may be flushed together from a spot of rushy 
ground ; but we have no other owls in our list which congregate. 
Dr. Coues relates an instance of the longeared owl once forming 
a community. This bird is a variety of our English species, known 
as Otus Wilsonianus. Quoting from information supplied by 
Dr. Gentry, Dr. Coues tells us :— 
“ Within three-quarters of a mile of Chestnut Hill (upper part of German- 
town), existed an immense forest of pines, within a comparatively recent 
period, which was the great place of rendezvous of the longeared owl during 
the dreary winter months, and where, in the spring-time, the females 
deposited their eggs in rude and unsightly nests of their own construction. 
The numbers that thronged this thicket of pines was prodigious, so there 
were very few of the trees, if any, that had not supported one or more nests. 
The many fragments of the bones of mammals and birds, and the other 
remains of the same in piles upon the ground, bore testimony to the whole- 
sale destruction of life that was carried on. Within the last two years, 
during which time many of the trees have yielded to the woodman’s axe, 
the number that visit the wood is small in comparison. The birds have 
mostly gone to more congenial localities, and but a few remain of all that 
mighty host.” 
There is one interesting species of ow], varieties of which are 
common in both North and South America, which, as is well 
known, is social; concerning whose habits a good many fables 
