Ill Farm and Garden. 185 



who fully recognize the merits of this useful bird, 

 worth more than half a dozen cats in any farmstead, 

 and requiring no keep whatever. These birds are 

 specially fond of the tall-roofed barns where nothing 

 intervenes between the rafters and the slates or tiles, 

 where little daylight ever enters, and where ready 

 means of getting out and in are presented. There 

 are farms where the Owl is quite an institution, where 

 no one ever thinks of molesting it, and where its 

 peculiar noises and nightly wanderings create not the 

 least curiosity. In fact, the bird is regarded as part 

 and parcel of the barns, a useful adjunct to the cats 

 and village rat-catcher, and a good many times more 

 effective in ridding buildings and land of some of 

 their most annoying pests. We need scarcely state 

 that the Swift is a well-known summer visitor to 

 farm and farmstead. We shall have occasion to 

 allude to this bird again in a future chapter (conf. 

 p. 271). 



