NOCTURNAL SOUNDS. 
367 
Before I leave this subject I will extract from one 
of Mr. HilFs letters to me an interesting note on 
nocturnal forest sounds, heard in a very different part 
of the island. Tlie remarks with which it is prefaced 
are in themselves interesting, as referring to a species 
of Owl hitherto unrecorded. ‘‘The Eared Owl,” 
observes my friend, “ which I had sent to me from 
Manchester, was taken on the wooded mountain- 
skirts forming the back-country of that and the ad- 
joining parish of Trelawny. These back-mountains 
are opened in detached clearings, and planted with 
coffee, Indian corn, and esculent arums, and are 
usually exceedingly infested with rats ; the cellular 
limestone which protrudes through their rich vege- 
table deposits being prodigious harbouring places for 
those rodents. I find among my loose memoranda, 
that a Mr. Walker, an overseer of a plantation situ- 
ated among the furthest of the sugar settlements in 
St. James’s, mentioned to me that he had observed 
narrowly the Brown Owl, and that he had acquainted 
himself with its great diligence as a destroyer of 
Rats. He had remarked a roost to which one of 
them resorted ; and the extraordinary heaps of casts, 
deposited at the root of the tree on which this Owl 
usually devoured his prey, made piles of undigested 
bones, among which Rats’ teeth were conspicuously 
teeth arranged in two curved lines, whose convexity is forward, 
scarcely interrupted at their meeting angle. Tongue small ; posterior 
half (or rather more) round and free ; anterior portion oblong, and 
attached. Colour pale buff, studded with minute dark specks, irregu- 
larly scattered ; accumulated in the form of bands across the legs and 
thighs. A band of deep brown passes from the muzzle, through the 
eye, and is lost about the middle of the side. (See Plate VII.) 
