THE OWLS 171 



If 3-ou see one of a winter-time, and make a noise like a 

 mouse, they'll come and hang a 3^ard or two right over 3^our 

 head. 



" They set on the mash in the rushes of a daytime, and 

 lie very close when they ain't hunting; I have put 'em 

 up in Jul}^ : full-flappers. If an old rook see him of a day- 

 time, he'll trosh him in the air ; but once he get outer the 

 ground, they daresen't interfere with him. I have often seen 

 him hunting tree o'clock of an aternoon ; they don't mind 

 daylight no more than you nor I. The}' roost all in a clutch 

 back of the lumps of stuff. 



"The^'^'re little warmin to fight tew. I winged one 

 t' winter, and sent the dorg arter it. But he tarned on his 

 back, and caught the dorg a shivering tip on the face, and 

 old Jocko wouldn't face him no more — he had got enough, 

 I reckon." 



The owls then do not give us much opportunity for 

 study — a screech, a hoot, a snore, a barking or mewing, 

 a sucking sound, a noiseless bird flying through the gloom 

 or over the moonlit marshes, a fluttered object chased by 

 small birds in the daylight, a solemn creature roosting in 

 a dark shed, by accident discovered. Quantities of casts, 

 little parcels of fur, feathers, or scales and bones — mingled 

 remains of rats, mice, water-voles, sparrows, and other small 

 birds — these are merely the signs of the owl, the evidences 

 of his existence. But his real life is but little known, nor 

 can it be anything else, for he is a night-bird. 



But, mysterious as he is to us, he is a good friend — one 

 of the farmer's best friends. Never does he harm the game- 

 preserve ; and yet the bumptious, bragging keeper — that 

 flunkey of much knowledge and much ignorance curiousl}' 

 interwoven — will slay him ruthlessly, as he does the kestrel, 

 and the reward is a plague of mice, that eat the farmer's 

 corn, and there is no gold to pay the landlord, who hires 

 the keeper who kills the owls, who kill the rats and mice 

 that eat the corn that enrich the farmer, who pays the 



