Nuttall says that this owl makes a hollow mourning, expressed by the words clou cloud incessantly repeated during the night, so as to be troublesome, and that it is employed as a decoy. He further remarks that it is almost a denizen of the world, being found from Hudson's Bay to the West Indies, throughout Europe, in Africa, Northern Asia, and probably China, in all which countries it appears to be resident. It is said to be the most common owl in France.

"Le moyen Duc, ou bien Hibou cornu,
Comme le Duc par satyrique geste
Donne plaisir, et a cornes en teste.

Aux monts d'Auvergne il est assez cognu."

We now come to the only known regularly migrating British owl; for though it is believed, and with reason, that the Scops, so rare with us, is a regular visiter, the fact has not been ascertained.

The short-eared owl (Brachyotus palustris) comes to us from the north about October: but Sir W. Jardine has recorded the breeding of some on the Scottish moors, where it is well known to the grouse-shooter. The nest was a hole scraped in the ground. In consequence of the general arrival of these birds in the southern parts of Britain with the first fair October winds, they are called woodcock-owls, an appellation branded on the memory of more than one luckless would-be sportsman.

From some turnip-field hard by a plantation, or a tuft of rushes close to a copse on a moist hill-side, up springs a russet-plumaged bird and is in the cover in a moment.

The eager shooter "catches a glintse on 'in," as an old keeper used to say, through the trees: bang goes the gun.

"That's the first cock of the season!" exclaims he, exultingly. Up comes John, who has been sent, ostensibly, to attend him, but really, to take care of him.

"I'm sure he's down," pointing to the cover-as many are apt to say when they shoot at a cock, without being able to produce the body.

"Well let's look, sir-where did a drop?"

"There-just by that holly."

In they go, retriever and all.

"There he lies," cries the delighted shot, loading his gun triumphantly in measureless content; "dead as Harry the Eighth. I knew he was down-there-just where I said he was, close by that mossy stump-can't you see?"

66

Iss, sir, I sees well enough, but I don't like the looks on 'in-his head's a trifle too big, and a do lie too flat on his face."

"Pick up the cock, I say," rejoins our hero, somewhat nettled. "I can't do that, sir," says John, lifting a fine specimen of Otus palustris, and holding it up to the blank-looking cockney, amid the ill-suppressed laughter of those confounded fellows who attend to mark not only the game, but the number of shots that are missed, on their abominable notched sticks.

"Never mind, sir," adds the comforter John, "if t'ant a cock, a did kip company wi' em; and a's curous like, and since you han't killed nothen else to-day, I'd bag un, if I was you: he'll look uncommon well in a glass case."

This owl, again, is widely spread over the whole continent of Europe, over India, and Africa. It has been found in America, where it is the Tho-thos-cau-sew of the Cree Indians, as far north as 67°. In summer, it haunts Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Newfoundland. In winter, it goes as far south as Pennsylvania.

The scops-eared owl, or little horned owl, Scops Aldrovandi, Le Petit Duc and Huette of the French, Zivetta and Chiù, of the Italians, is a very pretty little bird, the tints, shadings, and pencillings of whose plumage it is impossible to describe verbally. It is very rare in England, and generally considered to be a summer visiter, retiring southward to the warmer parts of Europe, and to Africa, before the cold weather sets in.

Mr. John Hogg states in his "Natural History of the Vicinity of Stockton-on-Tees," that it breeds in Castle Eden Dene. In France, where it is far from common, its arrival and departure are looked for at the same time as the advent and disappearance of the swallow.

Mr. Spence, the well-known coadjutor of the Rev. William Kirby, gives an interesting account of its habits in "Loudon's Magazine of Natural History."

This owl," says Mr. Spence, "which in summer is very common in Italy, is remarkable for the constancy and regularity with which it utters its peculiar note or cry. It does not merely to the moon complain' occasionally, but keeps repeating its plaintive and monotonous cry kew, kew' (whence its Florentine name of Chiù, pronounced almost exactly like the English letter Q), in the regular intervals of about two seconds, the livelong night, and until one is used to it, nothing can well be more wearisome. Towards the end of April, last year (1830), one of these owls established itself in the large Jardin Anglais, behind the house where we resided at Florence; and, until our departure for Switzerland in the beginning of June, I recollect but one or two instances in which it was not constantly to be heard, as if in spite to the nightingales which abounded there, from nightfall to midnight (and probably much later),

whenever I chanced to be in the back part of the house, or took our friends to listen to it, and always with precisely the same unwearied cry, and the intervals between each as regular as the ticking of a pendulum. This species of owl, according to Professor Savi's excellent Ornitologia Toscana, vol. i. p. 74, is the only Italian species which migrates; passing the winter in Africa and Southern Asia, and the summer in the south of Europe. It feeds wholly upon beetles, grasshoppers, and other insects."

In the Portraits d'Oyseaux, the following quatrain appears beneath the figure of this Little Duke:

"Une Huette est petit Duc nommée,

Pour ressembler au grand Duc, et moyen
Entièrement. De vray elle n'a rien

De différent, maist est ainsi formée."

This elegant miniature species closes the list of British owls, properly so called, and we now proceed to a rapid sketch of the occasional visiters.

The hawk-owl, Surnia funerea (American and English), which as we have before observed, hunts by day, and, as might be expected, has, like the snowy owl, the facial disk less perfect than that of the nocturnal owls, can hardly be said to be a voluntary visiter; for the only instance recorded is the arrival of one on board a ship off the coast of Cornwall, whence it was afterwards landed and lived a short time in captivity; but the trim little owl, or passerine owl, Athene Noctua of the Prince of Canino, Strix passerina of authors, has been taken several times; and more rarely, another small species, Tengmalm's owl, Nyctale Tengmalmi of the Prince of Canino, Strix Tengmalmi of authors. This elegantly marked owl is abundant in North America, where it is the Cheepai-peethees, and Cheepomesees (death-bird) of the Cree Indians.

"When," says Dr. Richardson, "it accidentally wanders abroad in the day, it is so much dazzled by the light of the sun as to become stupid, and it may then be easily caught by the hand. Its cry in the night is a single melancholy note, repeated at intervals of a minute or two; and it is one of the superstitious practices of the Indians to whistle when they hear it. If the bird be silent when thus challenged, the speedy death of the inquirer is augured; hence its Cree appellation of death-bird."

The great snowy owl, Nyctea candida of the Prince of Canino, Strix nyctea of authors, which is a mighty hunter, and adroit fisher by day, in the northern and arctic regions at least, striking at the hare in its course, and clutching his finny prey with one

sudden stroke of his powerful foot as he sails over the water, or watches patiently, perched on a stone in the shallows, with his legs and feet defended from the cold by his thick feather-boots, has occasionally been driven to our shores; less frequently, however, than the great horned owl, or eagle owl, Bubo maximus of Sibbald, Strix Bubo of Linnæus, the Grand Duke herein before celebrated.

But even his visits are so few and far between, that we are not justified in inflicting upon our readers his natural history and the feats that he does in the cold starlight when he leaves his lofty abode, or those done to him by the old French falconers, who turned him out with the appendage of a fox's tail, in order to entrap the kite that was sure to fly after him, if there was one in the country, to observe what Mrs. Tabitha Bramble would have called the "phinumenon," though the temptation thereunto be strong.

So we are fain to conclude with the old quatrain of 1557, lamenting at the same time that though the Italians named him Duco and Dugo, they also called him Bufo (as Belon writes it, though we much doubt whether he has not omitted an "f") and what is worse, give him at the present day the appellation of Gufo.

In truth he does appear to have earned for himself among them and our mercurial near neighbours the character of a very funny fellow, a character that we have often suspected from the accounts of the ancient dance ycleped Bubo. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous :

"Le Duc est dit comme le conducteur

D'autres oyseaux, quand d'un lieu se remuent.
Comme Bouffons changent de gestes, et muent,
Ainsi est-il folastre et plaisanteur."

"THE noble Philip Marnixius of St. Aldegond," quoth Clusius, in his " Discourse,' ," "had a parrot, whom I have oft heard laugh like a man, when he was by the by-standers bidden so to do in the French tongue, in these words-Riez, Perroquet, Riez-yea,

which was more wonderful, it would presently add in the French tongue, as if it had been endued with reason, but doubtless so taught, le grand sot qui me faict rire, and was wont to repeat these words twice or thrice."* Whether it may be the lot of our parrots to provoke a smile, or, like the Parakeet of Topaze (which was hatched before the deluge, had been in the ark, had seen much, and was sent for by Rustan to amuse him till he went to sleep again), we shall be able to keep the reader awake, we know not. At all events, we should be more than satisfied if we were possessed of a tithe of its qualities for story-telling. "Sa mémoire, says Topaze to Rustan in Le Blanc and Le Noirwhat an opera that tale would make in these days of splendid scenery" Sa mémoire est fidelle, il conte simplement, sans chercher à montrer de l'esprit à tout propos, et sans faire des phrases." But, if we should, indeed, shower poppies with effect, happy, in this world of care, will be the eyelids they weigh down. Sancho, at least, in such a case, would have blessed us for our invention.

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Now, thinks the Poppy-expectant, for the old stories of Bluff King Hal's Parrot, and in the exquisite spelling of Aldrovandi Gibe the Knabe a Grott," id est, adds the worthy, da nebuloni solidum. No-neither shall we dwell on Colonel Kelly's parrot; nor on the ill-used bird that, in consequence of having told of what it ought not to have seen, was made to believe a hand-mill, a watering-pot, and burnt rosin, a storm of thunder and lightning as good as any that Mr. Crosse brings into his house from

"clouds

With heaven's artillery fraught."

Not that we have not a great respect for the birds above hinted at, and, indeed, for all of these Anthropoglotts, as the Greeks called them, from the similitude of their fleshy tongues to that of man, whether, like the Cardinal's parrot, they can say the Apostle's creed or not ;t though we do not, perhaps, carry our veneration quite so far as the learned Cardan, who was of opinion that they meditated as well as spoke. Their fondness, their jealousy, their hatred-their exhibition of many of the passions which make the human race happy or miserable, beloved or

* "Clusius, his Discourse and Account of Parrots."—Willughby's Trans

lation.

A correspondent, after speaking of this book in terms the most gratifying, but far beyond its merits, suggests that I may mention, as a pendant to the cardinal's parrot, one that belonged to his sister-in-law in India, that used to say his "Bismillah" like a good Mahommedan, every morning before he had his breakfast.