AN OWLOLASS TRICK. 83 



iclineiimon died after getting his head and thorax out of 

 the chrysalis, and remains as seen in the picture to tell of 

 the double tragedy of the butterfly and its enemy. 



An Owlglass Trick. 



BY A PINFEATHER ORNITHOLOGIST. 



Twenty-two years ago a kind but misguided friend gave 

 me a stuffed horned owl, hideousl}^ mounted on a round 

 stick. "Minerva's bird, and tj^pical of wisdom; a suita- 

 ble ornament for the top of 3'our bookcase, my dear," she 

 said, " so take it with my love." 



For the sake of the love, and not at all for Minerva's, 

 I have kept the owl, and daily dusted him with varying 

 tides of appreciation, which never reached their flood, I 

 fear. I have often looked for moths in his plumage, but 

 there they never came, preferring my furs and ostrich 

 feathers. Had he been moth-eaten, I could surely have 

 buried him with a good conscience in the rubbish barrel. 

 As I was today for the 7965th time giving him his dail)- 

 rub with the duster, I said to myself, ' ' What on earth are 

 \'ou keeping this stuffed relic here for. Pin Feather?" 

 Wh}^ not unperch him, and carry him into the woods with 

 you ? Set him up in a life-like attitude on a branch, and 

 sit you down in the near-by scrub to watch." 



In an hour we were both actually placed as I had fan- 

 cied. Minerva's bird, his feet once more clutching a real 

 branch in a forest, looked so life-like that it seemed as 

 though this contact must really have thrilled his cotton 

 and arsenic "insides." Myself, Turk fashion on the 

 ground under a neighboring tree, I waited. Nothing hap- 

 pened. Not a chirp was heard in any direction. It seemed 

 fearfully still to a woman alone in a gloomy forest of tall 



