daring Goshawk[3] wherever
wild crags and precipices afford safe breeding places. In the district
of Anarajapoora, where it is trained for hawking, it is usual, in lieu
of a hood, to darken its eyes by means of a silken thread passed through
holes in the eyelids. The ignoble birds of prey, the Kites[4], keep
close by the shore, and hover round the returning boats of the fishermen
to feast on the fry rejected from their nets.

[Footnote 1: Falco peregrinus, _Linn_.]

[Footnote 2: Tinnunculus alaudarius, _Briss_.]

[Footnote 3: Astur trivirgatus, _Temm_.]

[Footnote 4: Milvus govinda, _Sykes_. Dr. Hamilton Buchanan remarks that
when gorged this bird delights to sit on the entablature of buildings,
exposing its back to the hottest rays of the sun, placing its breast
against the wall, and stretching out its wings _exactly as the Egyptian
Hawk is represented on their monuments_.]

_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."[l] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its
scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the
harbinger of approaching calamity.

[Footnote 1: Syrnium indranee, _Sykes_. The horror of this nocturnal
scream was equally prevalent in the West as in the East. Ovid Introduces
it in his _Fasti_, L. vi. 1. 139; and Tibullus in his Elegies, L.i. El
5. Statius says--

"Nocturnae-que gemunt striges, et feralia bubo
_Danna canens_." Theb. iii. I. 511.

But Pliny, 1. xi. c. 93, doubts as to what bird produced the sound; and
the details of Ovid's description do not apply to an owl.

Mr. Mitford, of the Ceylon Civil Service, to whom I am indebted for many
valuable notes relative to the birds of the island, regards the
identification of the Singhalese Devil-Bird as open to similar doubt: he
says--"The Devil-Bird is not am owl. I never heard it until I came to
Kornegalle, where it haunts the rocky hill at the back of
Government-House. Its ordinary note is a magnificent clear shout like
that of a human being, and which can be heard at a great distance, and
has a fine effect in the silence of the closing night. It has another
cry like that of a hen just caught, but the sounds which have earned for
it its bad name, and which I have heard but once to perfection, are
indescribable, the most appalling that can be imagined, and scarcely to
be heard without shuddering; I can on