STRIX FLAMMEA. 165 



in its stomach, and some counted no less than four shrews' 

 skulls at one time in it. It is inactive from sunrise to sunset, 

 sitting nearly erect, with retracted neck and large eyelids closed 

 (like a tired-out judge over a weary case) in some obscure nook 

 or hole, sleeping (while others are hunting or basking in the 

 sunshine), waiting till twilight enables its peculiar structure of 

 eye and ear to see and hear objects distinctly. If surprised in 

 the daytime it is as helpless as a startled pigeon at night, or a 

 fish out of the water ; for, instead of flying away, it stares like a 

 fool in drink, raises its feathers, hisses like a cat, snaps with its 

 bill, and blinks with its large, black, lustrous eyes. And should 

 it be driven from its haunt it is dazzled and bewildered — like a 

 modest girl suddenly left alone in a crowded cit}", before woman 

 assumed the airs and the duties of man. It flies with a 

 hesitating flight, gladly seeking the shelter of some dark retreat. 

 A barn owl seen during the day excites the rage of the smaller 

 birds, which attack and tease it with impunity, chief of which 

 is the bold little blue-tit and the lively chaffinch ; but, if 

 imbecile by day, the barn owl assumes a very different character 

 when darkness (which bewilders them) restores it to its proper 

 element ; when, with keen eye and noiseless wing, watching for 

 prey it becomes activity itself — hence " The night to the owl 

 and morn to the lark." No doubt its harsh shriek (from which 

 it derives its name) is apt to startle the lonely traveller if near 

 " Some howlet-haunted biggin'," as Burns has it, or as he wrote 

 among the ruins of Lincluden Abbey — 



" Where the hoolet mourns in her ivy boiver, 

 And tells the midnight moon her care." 



Or as Sir Toby Belch says in " Twelfth Night "— 



" Shall we rouse the night owl in a catch, that will draw three souls 

 Out of one weaver ? Shall we do that ? " 



Without entering upon that egotistical and uncharitable feeling 

 which made Macgillivray say — "If the belief of ghosts had not 

 been extinct among the more enlightened — to which class / and 

 my readers belong — I had taken that shriek for the cry of the 

 beautiful, guilty, and deservedly miserable Queen Mary." Be 

 that as it may, I say with Hamlet " Give every man his deserts, 

 who shall escape whipping 1 " The shriek of this owl at night, 

 in lonely places where few persons enter without some feeling of 

 awe, has given it a weird character, independent of any merely 

 superstitious feeling ; and this shrieking cry, unexpectedly 

 heard in a kirkyaird, or among the ruins of some old monastery, 



