178 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



country women and even boys. What was there to be 

 "afeard" of when one knew with perfect certainty that all the 

 suppositious horrors came from birds? So the owls and I 

 were friends at a very early age. I remember one startling 

 me a little once. He passed from behind so close as almost 

 to brush my cheek with his wings. Not a sound was heard, 

 of course, for the passage of an owl and even the beats of 

 his wings are absolutely noiseless. A moment after he curved 

 up a little in his flight and then dropped like a stone almost 

 just as one sees a harrier do sometimes in the daylight on to 

 the hedge-bank at the side of the lane to emerge with 

 something in his claw, a mouse or rat probably. 



My early friends were specimens of the white or barn 

 owl so well known all over western lands, Strix flammea of 

 the scientists, a species which I have never seen in China, but 

 which is, I believe, represented by a relative, Strix Candida, 

 well known in Formosa and Japan where it finds shelter, 

 food, and home amongst long grass and reeds. I have 

 referred to the superstitions respecting owls believed in by 

 people of the West because the same phenomenon is found 

 here in China, and if possible in an exaggerated form. The 

 Chinese are even more given to belief in the absurdities of 

 the past than Western people are, and it must be confessed 

 that when exact knowledge is lacking there are ample 

 grounds for fright, and plenty of apprehensions on which to 

 base alarm, to scare people out of their wits, and make 

 their very flesh creep, where owls are concerned. Omne 

 ignotiim Pro magnifico. Sight and hearing both combine to 

 aid in the "proofs" of a petrifying fearfulness which might 

 otherwise be denied. One of the most dreaded of the causes 

 of some of these hair-raising nocturnal alarms is one of the 

 prettiest little species contained in the owl family -Athene 

 Whiteleyi. Every sportsman knows him almost as well as 

 he knows the local dove or blackbird. He is to be found in 

 every second or third clump of bamboos near to villages, and 

 here he may be watched by one who likes to approach warily 

 during the day. Whiteley's owlet, as he is called, sits all 

 bunched up during the sunlight, generally in the thickest part 

 of the bamboo branches but sometimes out in clear sight on 

 the branch of a tree. He looks, as he is, about the size of a 

 man's closed fist with a fairly thick glove on. His colours 

 are of the usual owl kind which range from the darkest of 

 chocolate through all shades of browns and tawnies to grey 

 and white. A tiny mite to be the object of so much dread! 

 The "cat-headed-hawk," mao-deu-ying, is its colloquial 

 village name near Shanghai, changing up north to "mao-erh- 

 foit,' the catheaded. One might shoot dozens on a trip of a 

 fortnight or so, for not only will the short-sighted quarry 



