THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 97 



had embraced Minerva's representative fowl^ who persistently, at 

 brief intervals, voiced the syllables, to hoot, to hoot, to hoo. This 

 signal of distress was soon responded to by an accomplice owl, who 

 came and perched on a small tree at a distance of about twenty feet 

 from his manacled coadjutor. The alternate outcries of the uncanny 

 musicians continued for an hour or more, until dim dawn announced 

 that the vanishing hour had arrived for spookish birds and spookish 

 bird-notes. At this juncture my son went out, gun in hand, but 

 the unimprisoned bird took a very precipitate departure, seeing that 

 his unfortunate mate was past solacement, if not past praying for ; 

 No. I bird was now lowered, taken in and done for. It was a hand- 

 some sample of his kind, and his beautiful plumage and powerful 

 adaptations were looked upon with a shuddering interest. 



Here is the fitting place, perhaps, to allude to the circumstance 

 of these powerful carnivorous birds being much infested with insect 

 parasites. On preparing the body of this particular owl for taxider- 

 mical purposes, quite a few hemipterous creatures were found at the 

 roots of the feathers, adhering by their suction tube or proboscis, and 

 in a more numerous group near to the anus of the victimized bird. 

 These insects bear a strong resemblance, in form and size, to those 

 entomological pests that annoy the ovine race and are very com- 

 monly known as sheep ticks. The only obvious differentiation is 

 that the owl ticks have large membranous wings. Years ago we 

 had noticed that the large horned owl is much infested with these 

 flying ticks, sometimes in great numbers, and sportsmen, who are 

 close observers, and whose testimony is valuable, assure us that the 

 common partridge or ruffled grouse, Tetrao Umbellus, is troubled 

 and infested frequently by a winged tick that, to an ordinary eye, 

 bears a very strong resemblance to those by which the owl's body is 

 depleted or preyed upon. 



Insects of that particular order are supposed by many to delight 

 in forests, and decaying wood and leaves, as breeding places. We 

 have frequently ourselves found a large bluish white tick pertina- 

 ciously fastened into the neck of the black and red squirrel ; and not 

 very rarely have found the common woodchuck or Canadian mar- 

 mot similarly unwillingly appendaged and preyed upon. 



I am also assured by some of my intelligent neighbors that 

 children, after walking or playing in the primitive woods, frequently 

 return home with tick-like creatures adhering to the bare parts of the 



