165 
unknown causes, I leave for the determination of abler Naturalists. It was, 
therefore, with a sort of friendly feeling, associated with years long gone by, that 
I again hailed the appearance of these birds—abundant as once in my own land— 
soaring above me when in the valleys, or below me as I looked down on that splen¬ 
did view which bursts upon the sight from the battlements of the Attenschloss, or 
old castle of Baden Baden. In the latter case, when their airy forms, lightened 
up by the rays of a continental sun of which England is doomed never to know 
the brilliancy, were relieved by contrast with the dark shades of the pine-forest 
beneath, every graceful motion might be observed, the almost invisible quivering 
of the wing, the varied rudder-like guidance of the lengthy forkened tail—now 
lateral, now perpendicular—and the keen, penetrating eye, as the pirate of the 
woods floated slowly by on a level with the castle rock. From their numbers, it 
would appear that the gardes de chasse of the Grand Duke allowed them to exist 
unmolested. 
The Eagle Owl, (Strix bubo J. The only specimen I saw was an unfortu¬ 
nate captive, imprisoned in a wicker cage, in the most inappropriate situation ima¬ 
ginable for a solitary and hermit-like tenant of the forest and the wilderness. 
There he stood erect, with his bright, brilliant, glaring, golden eyes—now half¬ 
opening, now closing—then, shaded by the intervention of his nictitating mem¬ 
brane, exposed to the full light of the noon sun, with the additional reflection of 
the wide sheet of waters of the Rhine immediately before him. But this, perhaps, 
he counted the most insignificant of the daily evils he was doomed to suffer ; for 
his prison was within a yard or so of a public garden, filling up a vacant angle be¬ 
tween the entrance and the front door of one of the most crowded and noisy hotels 
in Cologne—inviting, by its juxta position to the public path, a visit from every 
passer by, man, woman, or child; the former suffocating, and offending his nice 
sense of smell, by clouds of smoke from countless and ever-puffing cigars—the 
second deafening his ears by an incessant Babel of unknown tongues—and the 
third, in addition to cries and ejaculations, poking and annoying him with sticks 
or any other assailing materials within their reach : the garden, moreover, over¬ 
flowing from morning till night with visitors of all nations and descriptions, for 
whose amusement (most assuredly not for the Eagle Owl’s) a loud military band 
was employed morning and evening, and, when required, at intermediate times, to 
exercise their vacation. 
It was said to have been taken in the neighbourhood, but the exact locality I 
could not ascertain. Poor bird ! How differently situated from the last I had 
noticed of his species on the Continent. At midnight, in one of the wildest gorges 
and dark forests of the Pyrenees, impinging on the dreary flanks of the Maladitta, 
I was roused from a reverie by a startling and unearthly shriek. It was the cry 
of the Eagle Owl, and I shall never forget it. 
Butcher Bird, (Lanius excubitor). Never having seen this species alive and 
