Chap. 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. 1 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. Statins says — 



Nocturnaeque gemunt striges, et fer alia bubo 

 Damna canens. . Theb. iii. 1. 51 1. 



But Pliny, 1. xi. c. 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 



4 



