CHAPTER V 



"Sad Aziola ! * many an eventide 

 Thy music I had heard 



By wood and stream, meadow and mountain side, 

 And fields and marshes zvide, — 

 Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird 

 The soul ever stirred : 

 Unlike and far sweeter than them all. 

 Sad Aziola from that moment I 

 Loved thee and thy sad cry. " 



Shelley. 



Another bird that visits country-houses with unbounded 

 confidence in man, if man would only recognise it, is the owl. 

 How many people know that if they will put little barrels up 

 in trees, or among ivy, that the barn-owls will accept the 

 invitation and make the barrels their home, brino-ino- to it 

 many a hundred mice in the course of the year, and scaring 

 away thousands more? Yet such is the case. And those who 

 keep pigeons need not be alarmed. The owl will not touch 



* " 'Tis nothing but a little downy owl." — Shelley. 



