his approach by a loud hissing from one of the ugliest creatures he had ever beheld; so that he hesitated to touch it. I encouraged him, however; for from the top I could witness all that took place; and he at length opened the basket, and with a stick tumbled the young bird in. Not the least vestige of a nest, nor of any apology for one, was there; but the bird had reposed on a broad mass of half-digested hair, mingled profusely with the bones of rats and birds; half of a rat lay there, freshly killed, the fore parts being devoured. At a little distance from the bird lay, on the same mass, three eggs, in no wise to be distinguished from those of a hen, in form, size, or colour, save that they were scarcely equal to the _average_ size of hen’s eggs. I may add that, on emptying them afterwards, I found them to contain only a fluid apparently homogeneous, glairy, but turbid, like very thin paste. They were not collected for sitting, neither being within six inches of another. No sooner had Sam descended, than the old Owl again appeared; but, after flying round the mouth of the pit, and settling for an instant on one of the trees, she flew off again; and though, when we had secured the young and eggs, we waited long in expectation of her return, she came no more while we remained. Having passed up the things by the brier, the lad _shinned_ up the tree without much difficulty, and we proceeded home with our young charge. On taking him out, I found him a strange figure indeed: the head long, and sparingly clothed with down; the curved beak, with its flesh-coloured cere; the immense orbits of the eyes marked by a white ring of small down, and the top and back of the head, and all the body besides, thickly clothed with white down of exquisite softness, strongly reminding me of a hair-dresser’s powder-puff. The tips of the wings displayed the budding quills, but they bore the singular appearance of flesh-coloured tubes, crowned with a divergent tuft of down. The hinder parts were, as usual in young birds, large and protuberant, and there was not a vestige of a tail as yet. The feet and legs were well developed, and the bird sometimes stood up on them, but more usually rested on the whole sole, in an upright, but most grotesque attitude. The clothing down was of the purest white, except that in a few parts, as the back of the head and neck, the shoulders, and the elbow of the wing, it was slightly tinged with a delicate buff, hardly discernible. He was a very cross fellow, biting spitefully at everything presented to him, and sometimes at the boards around him, without any provocation; but the beak, though sharp and hooked, was not moved by sufficient muscular power to hurt the hand. He was almost constantly hissing; particularly, but not only, when approached, giving out a sound, that for character, and really almost for volume, may be likened to that produced by the rushing forth of steam from the waste-pipe of an engine. While I was bringing him