Colonel Irby said that this Owl, which is most useful to man, can be preserved and increased by fixing an 18-gallon cask in a tree. The barrel should be placed on its side and have a hole cut in the upper part of the head for the Owls to enter; care must, however, be taken that Jackdaws do not take possession of the cask. Our gamekeepers are beginning now to be convinced of the usefulness of the Owl, especially in view of the fact that so many young birds are taken by the Brown Rat, a favourite quarry with the Owl--not to speak of the Voles and Mice the bird devours. The late Lord Lilford told me that he had watched a nest of young Owls being fed by their parents in an old cedar tree in the rectory garden of a relative, and that on one occasion the old birds came bringing food to these seventeen times in half an hour by the clock, on that evening. There was a rickyard not far from the nest which was the Owls’ favourite hunting-ground. Mice were not plentiful there, but rats swarmed, and the pellets found under the nest were here composed almost entirely of the remains of the latter. In the South of France and in Spain this Owl is accused of drinking oil from lamps in the peasants’ houses and in the churches and chapels. The name given to it in the former country by the peasant of the _Midi is Béou l’oli_--bird that drinks oil. Attracted by the light of the lamps, the poor Owl perhaps has entered, once in a way, and in its fright has upset a lamp. Superstition grows on very meagre fare. This ally of the agriculturalist has been ill-repaid for his services. Butler writes:-- “An Owl that in a barn Sees a mouse creeping in the corn, Sits still and shuts his round blue eyes As if he slept, until he spies The little beast within his reach, Then starts, and seizes on the wretch.” “Not a bird of the forest e’er mates with him, All mock him outright by day, But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, The boldest will shrink away.” But why this is so who can tell? If the Barn Owl shows himself by day, Rooks and Starlings, Blackbirds, both species of Thrush, Chaffinches, Tits and Wrens will mob him; and he flies awkwardly from tree to tree, with dazed eyes and apparently “mazed,” as the country folks says, altogether, till he can find a hole in a tree where he can hide himself. He may well like hollows in trees--for, as the poet says, “the Owl, with all his feathers, is a-cold.” This is not hard to understand, for the breast feathers are so light and fluffy that the wind easily parts them, laying bare the shivering skin.