Cuapr. VIII] 
OWLS. 
247 
lese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by 
night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the 
THE 
“DEVIL BIRD.” 
harbinger of impending calamity.’ There is a popular 
legend in connection. with it, to the effect that a morose 
races, the Ceylon bird approximat- 
ing most nearly to that of the 
Malayan Peninsula. 
1 The horror of this nocturnal 
scream was equally prevalent in the 
West as in the East. Ovid intro- 
duces it in his Fasti, L. vi. 1. 139; 
and Tibullus in his Elegies, L.i. 
El. 5. Statius says — 
Nocturnseque gemunt striges, et feralia bubo 
Damnu MGecaa _‘Theb. iii, 1. 511. 
But Pliny, 1. xi. cv. 93, doubts as to 
what bird produced the sound ;— 
and the details of Ovid’s descrip- 
tion do not apply to an owl. 
Mr. Mitford, of the Ceylon Civil 
Service, to whom I am indebted 
for many valuable notes relative to 
the birds of the island, regards the 
identification of the Singhalese 
Devil-Bird as open to similar 
R4 
