who have lived for twenty years in Bombay without seeing one, but the Screech Owl does not ordinarily put itself much in the way of being seen. A dark object, like a Flying Fox, passing overhead as you drive home from dinner, and a loud, harsh, husky screech, suggesting sore throat and loss of voice, are all the indications you will commonly have of its presence. But should a pair take up their residence in any deserted building, or old ruin, in your neighbourhood, then you will know more about them. I often wonder what the Screech Owls did before man was created, for they cannot get on without him now. If he did not build churches with steeples and belfries, and forts and castles with towers, and barns with roomy lofts, where would they live? In this Presidency they are under deepest obligations to the Portuguese. Under one of the remaining walls of an ecclesiastical ruin in Bassein Fort Mr. Phipson and I once noticed the ground glittering with small white bones. We gathered a handful of them and brought them home for examination, and could scarcely believe in ourselves or each other when they proved to consist chiefly of the jaw-bones of muskrats! In a high niche of that old wall a worthy pair of Screech Owls had, for who knows how many years, brought up an annual family of 3, 4, or 6 insatiable owlets on this nutritious food, varied only with an occasional house rat or field mouse. As is well known, owls swallow their prey whole, and after digesting all that is digestible, throw up the bones and hair rolled up into little balls. Why the bones we found were chiefly jaw-bones I cannot tell, unless the parent birds were in the habit of
