crowd of beings with which popular superstition has peopled the forests. Indeed, this species may be truly accused of "making night hideous," as it flies in search of the rats and mice upon which it principally subsists. "The favourite residence of the Virginian Horned Owl," says Wilson, "is in the dark solitudes of deep swamps, covered with a growth of gigantic timber, and here, as soon as evening draws on and mankind retire to rest, he sends forth such sounds as scarcely seem to belong to this world. Along the mountainous shores of the Ohio, and amidst the deep forests of Indiana, alone, and reposing in the woods, this ghostly watchman has frequently warned me of the approach of danger, and amused me with his singular exclamations. Sometimes sweeping down and around my fire, uttering a loud and sudden 'Waugh, O! Waugh, O!' sufficient to have alarmed a whole garrison. He has also other nocturnal solos, one of which very strikingly resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person suffocating or throttled." Richardson gives the following instance of the terror this Uhu so frequently excites:--"A party of Scotch Highlanders, in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, happened in a winter journey to encamp after nightfall in a dense clump of trees, whose dark and lofty stems, the growth of centuries, gave a solemnity to the scene that strongly tended to excite the superstitious feelings of the Highlanders. The effect was heightened by the discovery of a tomb which, with the natural taste often exhibited by Indians, had been placed in this secluded spot. Our travellers, having finished their supper, were trimming their fire preparatory to rest, when the slow and dismal notes of the Horned Owl fell on the ear with a startling nearness. None of them being acquainted with the sound, all thought that so unearthly a voice must be the moaning of the spirit of the departed, whose repose they imagined they had disturbed by inadvertently making a fire of the wood of which his tomb had been constructed. They passed a tedious night of fear, and with the first dawn of day hastily left the ill-omened spot."