464 AVES—OWL. 
powerfully upon the sensibility of tae eye, is excluded; while, by dilating 
the pupil, the animal takes in the more faint rays of the night, and thereby 
is enabled to spy its prey, and catch it with greater facility in the dark. 
But though owls are dazzled by too bright a daylight, yet they do not see 
best in the darkest nights, as some have been apt to imagine. 
The nights when the moon shines are the times of their most successful 
plunder; for when it is wholly dark, they are less qualified for seeing and 
pursuing their prey; except, therefore, by moonlight, they contract the hours 
of their chase ; and if they come out at the approach of dusk in the evening 
they return before it is totally dark, and then rise by twilight the next 
morning, to pursue their game, and to return, in like manner, before the 
broad daylight begins to dazzle them with its splendor. 
Yet the faculty of seeing in the night, or of being entirely dazzled by day, 
is not alike in every species of these nocturnal birds. The common white 
or barn owl, for instance, sees with such exquisite acuteness in the dark, 
though the barn has been shut at night, and the light thus totally excluded, 
that it perceives the smallest mouse that peeps from its hole; on the con- 
trary, the brown horned owl is often seen to prowl along the hedges by day, 
like the sparrow-hawk; and sometimes with good success. The note of the 
owl is not unpleasant. ‘A friend,” says Mr White, “remarks that most 
of his owls hoot in B flat; but that one went almost half a note below A. — 
A neighbor of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that the owls 
about this village hoot in three different keys, in G flat, or F sharp, in B flat 
and A flat. He heard two hooting to each other, the one in A flat, and the 
other in B flat.” 
THESAMERICAN. HORN ED OW? 
Tue great horned owl is fuund in almost every quarter of the United 
States. ‘His favorite residence, however, is in the dark solitudes of deep 
swamps, covered with a growth of gigantic timber; and here, as soon as 
evening draws or, and mankind retire to rest, he sends forth such sounds, 
as seem scarcely to belong to this world. Along the mountainous shores of 
the Ohio, and amidst the deep forests of Indiana, alone and reposing in the 
woods, this ghostly watchman has frequently warned me of the approach of 
morning, and amused me by his singular exclamations; sometimes sweep- 
ing down and around my fire, uttering a sudden Waugh O! Waugh O! 
sufficient to have alarmed a whole garrison. He has other nocturnal solos, 
no less melodious, one of which very strikingly resembles the half suppress- 
4 


1 Strix Virginiana, WIitson. 
