The Barn Owl. 



315 



Mr. Tegetmeier, in an interesting article, quotes Lord 

 Lilford, who stated that he had seen a pair of Barn Owls bring 

 food to their nest no less than seventeen times within half-an- 

 hour. At this rate, if continued only for four and a-half 

 hours, more than 150 rats and mice, " and such small deer," 

 would be destroyed daily for the support of a nest of owls and 

 the old birds. Mr. Tegetmeier asks : " Is it surprising that 

 vermin abound when their natural enemies have been exter- 

 minated by farmers, gamekeepers, and plmnassiers ?" In 

 an interesting work on the "Birds of Devon," the writer 

 observes, " Feeding almost exclusively on field mice and rats, 

 and destroying great numbers of these mischievous rodents, 

 besides varying his diet occasionally with larger beetles and 

 cockchafers, the Barn Owl renders immense benefit to agri- 

 culturists." Allusion is made in this work to Darwin's 

 discovery that red clover cannot seed without the interven- 

 tion of the humble bee to convey the pollen to the stigma, 

 and that field mice destroy humble bees wholesale by devour- 

 ing them and their honey comb ; if consequently the owls 

 are killed, field mice increase and multiply, and by exter- 

 minating the humble bees render the clover-seed crops a 

 failure. The experiences of a well-known careful observer 

 are also cited, who, in describing the contents of various 

 nests of the Barn Owl, remarks that he found four species of 

 mice at the same time in one nest, the common farm mouse ; 

 the little white-bellied, red-backed, short-bodied, harvest 

 mouse ; the large, thick-coated, full-headed, short-tailed 

 grass mouse ; and the long, sandy, long-tailed, long-eared 

 field mouse. This experienced witness adds, " I never saw 

 any kind of bird, rabbit, leveret, or other animal besides rats, 

 moles, and mice." In Germany the Barn Owl is much appre- 

 ciated. Professor Ritzema Bos states that it feeds on rats 

 and mice of all kinds, as well as cockchafers, the destructive 

 " Nun " moth [Liparis vionacha)^ and other injurious insects. 



In the United States there is a species of Strix closely 

 allied to Strix aluco, having identical habits. A long descrip- 

 tion of this species, known as Strix pratmcola, is contained in 

 the Report for 1893 of the Department of Agriculture at 

 Washington, in which it is remarked that all testimony goes 



