156 ' ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



feel an instinctive antipathy towards them, attack them 

 on every side with impunity, and amuse themselves 

 with heaping all kinds of insult upon their devoted 

 heads. So strong is the incentive to these wanton 

 outrages, that birdcatchers are in the habit of employ- 

 ing an owl to attract the lesser birds into their nets, 

 and sometimes even find an imitation of its cry sufficient 

 to produce the same effect. 



But this impunity lasts no longer than the full light 

 of day. As soon as the sun has sunk beneath the 

 horizon, the tormentors either quit the object of their 

 attack, or fall victims to his renovated powers. Beneath 

 the influence of the twilight, from which his large open 

 pupil receives sufficient rays to guide him in his search, 

 he sallies forth in quest of his prey, and aided by the 

 capacious volume of his ears and of the auditory cavities 

 with which they communicate, seldom fails to detect 

 the slightest rustling among the leaves of the trees or 

 beneath the herbage on the surface of the ground, while 

 his own motions are so light and noiseless as to give no 

 warning of his approach. In this manner the birds 

 retiring to their nests, and the smaller quadrupeds 

 seeking their subterraneous burrows, fall easy victims 

 to his attack. When their size admits of their being 

 swallowed entire, he crushes them by a few efforts of 

 his bill into a mass, which the amplitude of his throat 

 enables him to pass at once into his stomach, and thus 

 to lose as little as possible of the short time that is 

 allowed him for procuring his food. Like most other 

 predaceous birds, he afterwards rejects the bones, skin, 

 and feathers or hairs, formed into a ball. His powerful 

 talons enable him to carry off" his prey when disturbed, 

 or if it should be too large to be swallowed entire, to a 

 place of safety. 



Of the numerous genera into which the Owls are 



