10 
If this useful bird caught its food by day, instead of hunting 
for it by night, mankind would have ocular demonstration of its 
utility in thinning the country of mice ; and it would be pro¬ 
tected, and encouraged, everywhere. It would be with us what 
the ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will 
bring a mouse to the nest about every twelve or fifteen minutes. 
But, in order to have a proper idea of the enormous quantity of 
mice which this bird destroys, we must examine the pellets 
which its ejects from its stomach in the place of its retreat. 
Every pellet contains from four to seven skeletons of mice. In 
sixteen months from the time that the apartment of the owl on 
the old gateway was cleaned out, there has been a deposit of 
•about a bushel of pellets. 
The barn owl sometimes carried off rats. One evening I 
was sitting under a shed, and killed a very large rat, as it was 
coming out of a hole, about ten yards from where I was watching 
it. I did not go to take it up, hoping to get another shot. As it 
lay there, a barn owl pounced upon it, and flew away with it. 
This bird has been known to catch fish. Some years ago, on a 
fine evening in the month of July, long before it was dark, as I was 
standing on the middle of the bridge, and minuting the owl by my 
watch as she brought mice into her nest, all of a sudden she 
‘dropped perpendicularly into the water. Thinking that she had 
fallen down in epilepsy, my first thoughts were to go and fetch 
the boat, but before I had well got to the end of the bridge, I 
saw the owl rise out of the water with a fish in her claws, and 
take it to the nest. This fact is mentioned by the late much 
revered and lamented Mr. Atkinson, of Leeds, in his “ Com¬ 
pendium,” in a note, under the signature of “ W.,” a friend of 
his, to whom I had communicated it a few davs after I had wit- 
nessed it. 
I cannot make up my mind to pay any attention to the 
description of the amours of the owl by a modern writer; at 
least, the barn owl plays off no buffooneries here, such as those 
