264 General Notes. [April, 
were absent or had fled at the raising of the ladder, but the nest 
was destroyed and the young ones killed. Immediately afterward 
the parent-birds returned, exhibited the liveliest agitation, and 
flew backward and forward between the roof anda neighboring 
pi snapping their beaks and uttering continual cries. The 
ath of the old birds was also decreed, and for an hour or more 
a young man and his friends made vain attempts to shoot them. 
They were provided with an excellent gun, but the movement of 
the birds was so rapid that all their efforts were unavailing. 
Twilight came on, and still the owls pertinaciously hovered in the 
neighborhood of their ruined home. The friends becoming impa- 
tient went away, and the increasing darkness at length compelled 
the young man to give up his purpose. Just then the female owl 
flew into the dense foliage of a tree; into this the sportsman was 
about to fire at hazard when he suddenly heard a violent rustling 
of wings and leaves ; the bird shot like an arrow across the thirty 
or forty feet of interval, M. F. received a fierce blow full on the 
left eye, and at the same time was conscious of the rapid appari- 
tion of two round flaming eyes close to his face. The shock and 
the pain were so violent that M. F. fell backward on the ground. 
The owls flew away, and only reappeared at long intervals during 
the ensuing days. The next morning after a night of suffering, 
the two wounded men arrived at Lausanne, the master in a car, 
with a bandage over his left eye, and the servant driving, with a 
bandage over his right. The injuries were as follows : the man 
presented a severe contusion of the tissues around the lower bor- 
der of the eye, extensive swelling and infiltration of blood in the 
eyelids and under the conjunctiva. Ten or twelve days of cold 
applications removed all traces of the attack. 
M. F., on the other hand, was seriously injured. An L-shaped 
wound had laid open the cornea, through the edges of which 
projected two fragments of the iris. The anterior chamber was 
obliterated, the crystalline lens crushed, and the tissues generally 
infiltrated from the hemorrhage. The patient could scarcely per- 
ceive the strongest light, and his sufferings were so acute that 
for some days injections of morphia were continually required. 
The details of the treatment of the case will not interest the 
readers of the NATURALIST, suffice it to say that after four weeks 
of suffering, during which iridectomly was performed, F: 
recovered a partial degree of sight in the injured organ, though 
Dr. Dufour is of the opinion that the eyeball will ultimately 
become atrophied.) 
From this recital two conclusions may be fairly draw 
1. That the owl is courageous onbin not to Pa attacking a 
man 
2. That when thus attacking, its blows are  Wireetedl only at the 
eye. This intention, or these tactics, as it contd be termed, was 
early shown in the two occurrences ‘related. 
