THE CROW. 



leea and rapaoioTifl enemy. I hastened to the spot whence 

 the sonnds proceeded, and, to my great surprise, found a 

 Crow lying on the ground, just expiring, and, seated upon 

 the body of the yet wann and bleeding quarry, a large 

 hroum owl, who was beginning to make a meal of the unfor- 

 tunate robber of corn-fields. Perceiving my approach, he 

 forsook his prey with evident reluctance, and flew into a 

 tree at a little distance, where he sat watching all my 

 movements, alternately regarding, with longing eyes, the 

 victim he had been forced to leave, and darting at me no 

 very jfriendly looks, that seemed to reproach me for having 

 deprived him of his expected regale. 



" I confess that the scene before me waa altogether novel 

 and surprising. I am but little conversant with natural 

 history ; but I had always understood, that the depredations 

 of the owl were confined to the smaller birdb, and animals 

 of the lesser kind, such as mice, young rabbits, &c., and 

 that he obtained his prey rather by fraud and stratagem, 

 than by open rapacity and violence. I was the more eon- 

 finned in this belief, from the recollection of a passage in 

 Macbeth, which now forcibly recurred touny memory. The 

 courtiers of King Duncan are recounting to each other the 

 various prodigies that preceded his death, and one ci them 

 relates to his wondering auditors, that 



An eagle, towering in his pride of place, 

 Wae by a mousing owl hawked at and kUled 

 6 



