44 THE GREAT HORNED OWL. 



advanfAge of by the well infonned, for purposes far from 

 what ought to be the duty of a better education to inculcate. 

 None are more accessible to such superstitions than the 

 primitive natives of Ireland, and the north of Scotland. Dr. 

 Richardson thus relates an instance, which came to his own 

 knowledge, of the consequences arising from a visit of this 

 nocturnal wanderer : — 



" A party of Scottish Highlanders, in the service of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, happened, in a winter journey, to 

 encamp after nightfall in a dense clump of trees, whose dark 

 tops and lofty stems, the growth of more than one century, 

 gave a solemnity to the scene that strongly tended to excite 

 the superstitious feelings of the Highlanders. The effect was 

 heightened by the discovery of a tomb, which, with a natural 

 taste often exhibited by the Indians, had been placed in this 

 secluded spot. Our travellers, having finished their supper 

 were trimming their fire preparatory to retiring to rest, when 

 the slow and dismal notes of the Horned Owl fell on the ear 

 with a startling nearness. None of them being acquainted 

 with the sound, they at once concluded, that so unearthly 

 a voice must be the moaning of the spirit of the departed, 

 whose repose they supposed they had disturbed, by inad- 

 vertently making a fire of some of the wood of which his 

 tomb had been constructed. They parsed a tedious night 

 of fear, and, with the first dawn of day, hastily quitted th« 

 ill-omened spol." 



