_Owls_.--Of the nocturnal accipitres the most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that a morose and savage husband, who suspected the fidelity of his wife, availed himself of her absence to kill her child, of whose paternity he was doubtful, and on her return placed before her a curry prepared from its flesh. Of this the unhappy woman partook, till discovering the crime by finding the finger of her infant, she fled in frenzy to the forest, and there destroyed herself. On her death she was metamorphosed, according to the Buddhist belief, into an _ulama_, or Devil-bird, which still at nightfall horrifies the villagers by repeating the frantic screams of the bereaved mother in her agony. [Footnote 1: Syrnium Indranee, _Sykes._ Mr. Blyth writes to me from Calcutta that there are some doubts about this bird. There would appear to be three or four distinguishable races, the Ceylon bird approximating most nearly to that of the Malayan Peninsula.] [Illustration: THE "DEVIL BIRD."] [Footnote 2: The horror of this nocturnal scream was equally prevalent in the West as in the East. Ovid introduces it in his _Fasti_, L. vi. l. 139; and Tibullus in his Elegies, L. i. El. 5. Statius says-- Nocturnæque gemunt striges, et feralla bubo _Damna canens_. Theb. iii. l. 511. But Pliny, l. xi. c. 93, doubts as to what bird produced the sound;--and the details of Ovid's description do not apply to an owl.