WHITE, OK BAKN OWL. 
125 
on all great festivals; and some tribes have an idol in form of an 
Owl, to which they fasten the real legs of one.”* 
This species is rarely found in Pennsylvania in summer. Of 
its place and manner of building I am unable, from my own 
observation, to speak. The bird itself has been several times 
found in the hollow of a tree, and was once caught in a barn in 
my neighbourhood. European writers inform us, that it makes 
no nest; but deposits its eggs in the holes of walls, and lays five 
or six of a whitish colour; is said to feed on mice and small 
birds, which, like the most of its tribe, it swallows whole, and 
afterwards emits the bones, feathers, and other indigestible parts, 
at its mouth, in the form of small round cakes, which are often 
found in the empty buildings it frequents. During its repose it 
is said to make a blowing noise, resembling the snoring of a 
man.t 
It is distinguished in England by various names, the Barn 
Owl, the Church Owl, Gillihowlet and Screech Owl. In the 
lowlands of Scotland it is universally called the Hoolet. 
The White or Barn Owl is fourteen inches long, and upwards 
of three feet six inches in extent; bill a whitish horn colour, 
longer than is usual among its tribe; space surrounding each eye 
remarkably concave, the radiating feathers meeting in a high 
projecting ridge, arching from the bill upwards; between these 
lies a thick tuft of bright tawny feathers, that are scarcely seen 
unless the ridges be separated; face white, surrounded by a bor- 
der of narrow, thickset, velvetty feathers, of a reddish cream 
colour at the tip, pure silvery white below, and finely shafted 
with black; whole upper parts a bright tawny yellow, thickly 
sprinkled with whitish and pale purple, and beautifully inter- 
spersed with larger drops of white, each feather of the back and 
wing-coverts ending in an oblong spot of white, bounded by 
black; head large, tumid; sides of the neck pale yellow ochre, 
thinly sprinkled with small touches of dusky; primaries and 
secondaries the same, thinly barred and tbicldy sprinkled with 
Arct. Zool. p. 235. 
t Bewick, i, p. 90. 
