SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
Lord Lelford writes of a half-grown barn owl eating nine mice in rapid 
succession, and being hungry again in three hours; and also of an old pair of 
these birds which brought food to their nest seventeen times in half dn hour. 
In view of the unanimity of evidence as to the great utility of the barn owl 
from men who have carefully studied their habits, the necessity for the 
careful preservation of these valuable birds cannot be too strongly urged 
upon the whole community. The testimony of the two observers mentioned 
above relates to the bird in the Old World. The form found in this country 
is practically the same in every way, the only exception being a little variation 
in colouration, and it is distributed through Australia. The barn owl 
frequents heavily-timbered country when it breeds,.and often roosts during 
the daytime in hollow limbs of the gum trees. In the vast interior, where 
the trees are not large enough to form breeding places, the bird is found in 
old wells, mining shafts, caves and crannies of the rocks. Out upon the 
Nullarbor Plain these birds are numerous; they nest and pass the daylight 
hours in the numerous “ blow-holes ” to be found in that country. 
\ 
é. r LS. A. White, Photo, 
BLACK-BREASTED PLOVER (Zonifer tricolor). 
Brooding on Eggs. 
~My own research work in reference to this species of owl has been extended 
over a long period, and the results have been startling, some thousands 
of pellets having been examined, and I have proved that one bird, which has 
been in the habit of perching in a thick Araucaria Bidwilli (Monkey Puzzle 
or Hoop Pine) for some years now, destroyed in less than twelve months 
640 sparrows (Passer domesticus), 64 starlings (Sturnis vulgaris), 1,600 mice, 
60 young rabbits, in addition to many rats, and thousands upon thousands 
of night-flying insects, the latter being mostly very injurious to vegetation. 
Another lot of 273 pellets from this same bird, during a period of less than 
nine months, revealed, not cotinting many thousands of night-flying insects, 
ott 498 
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