THE BARN OWL IN CAPTIVITY. 
173 
is a brief account of an encroachment on a roadside waste at 
Ewhurst, near Gomshall in Surrey. To this encroachment the 
District Council have offered but a halting opposition, which 
has finally resulted in their taking no action whatever. This 
amounts to an abnegation of the very powers delegated to them 
by the Local Government Act of 1894. is strongly to be hoped 
that the Commons Preservation Society will in their next annual 
report emulate the sister society whose manual we have noticed, 
in plainly detailing the duties and powers of District Councils 
with regard to the preservation of open spaces of all kinds, and 
thus do something to remedy the bad start made by some mem- 
bers of our youngest legislative body in this direction. 
Archibald Clarke. 
THE BARN OWL IN CAPTIVITY. 
T will, I think, be of interest to readers of Nature 
Notes to hear that I have succeeded in getting barn 
owls to breed in captivity, and perhaps a few details 
may not be unwelcome. My first barn owl I bought in 
Seven Dials, six years ago ; he hung there in a small cage for 
some weeks, and each time I passed him he seemed to look 
more black and miserable, until at last I felt I could look at him 
no longer in his misery, so I bought him before he had turned 
quite into a black bird. He had no tail, so I named him Dodo. 
For a long time he was one of my studio companions, and for his 
next door neighbour he had a little Capuchin monkey, who took 
great interest in him, especially when he took it into his head to 
screech. Since the first day I had him — when he was greatly in 
need of a bath — I have kept him always supplied with water, 
which to owls, in common with all other birds, is so essential to 
health. The bath should be shallow, and sufficiently large for 
the bird to get right in and have a thorough wash ; in too deep 
water they not unfrequently drown themselves. To see a young 
owl take his first bath is a most amusing sight ; the antics that 
a pair of young long-eared owls which I had reared from the 
nest, went through when I first supplied them with their bath, 
would make a story in itself ; but I will not divert from my nar- 
rative of Dodo. 
Three years ago, when I left London, I brought my owl with 
me, and built him a large cage under cover out of doors. He 
soon grew a tail and put on the most perfect plumage, and the 
wild owls flying round my house would answer his calls. Think- 
ing that I might possibly get one to enter his cage, I fitted a wire 
door which could only open from the outside, and although it 
did not answer the purpose for which I intended it, it served 
