OWLS. 
151 
tremendous manner ; and these menaces well answer the inten- 
tion of intimidating : for I have known a whole village up in 
arms on such an occasion, imagining the church-yard to be full 
of goblins and spectres. White owls also often scream horribly 
as they fly along ; from this screaming probably arose the com- 
mon people's imaginary species of screech-owl, which they super- 
stitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The 
plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that 
I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it 
may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make 
much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to steal 
through the air unheard upon a nimble and watchful quarry. 
While I am talking of owls, it may not be improper to mention 
what I was told by a gentleman of the county of Wilts. As they 
were grubbing a vast hoUow pollard-ash that had been the 
mansion of owls for centuries, he discovered at the bottom a mass 
of matter that at first he could not account for. After some exa- 
mination, he found that it was a congeries of the bones of mice 
(and perhaps of birds and bats) that had been heaping together 
for ages, being cast up in pellets out of the crops of many gene- 
rations of inhabitants. For owls cast up the bones, fur, and 
feathers of what they devour, after the manner of hawks.* He 
believes, he told me, that there were bushels of this kind of 
substance. 
When brown owls hoot their throats swell as big as a hen's 
egg. I have known an owl of this species Hve a full year with- 
out any water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds 
of prey. When owls fly they stretch out their legs behind them 
as a balance to their large heavy heads : for as most nocturnal 
birds have large eyes and ears they must have large heads to 
contain them. Large eyes I presume are necessary to coUect 
every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the smallest 
degree of sound or noise. I am, &c. 
The hirmidines are a most inoffensive, harmless, entertaining, 
social, and useful tribe of birds : they touch no fruit in our gar- 
dens ; dehght, all except one species, in attaching themselves to 
* This is a habit common to Huany more of the feathered race than is generally supposed. I 
have taken a hard pellet, just ready to be ejected, from the stomach of a cuckoo, consisting of 
the ha:iry skins of caterpillars, and about the size of a sparrow's egg ; and all birds that feed much 
on beetles, as the motheater, the shrikes, chats, and even the nightingale, the robin, and the red- 
start, will thus occasionally cast up the indigestible refuse of whatever they had been feeding 
on. — Ed. 
