BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR 



as a wise bird, or was the fashion of depicting 

 it in the following of Minerva merely dictated 

 by the presence of these birds on the Akro- 

 polis ? It seems hardly conceivable that they 

 could so have blundered as to call the owls 

 that we know clever birds ; and the alter- 

 native assumption that owlish intellect can 

 have appreciably changed in the interval is 

 even less acceptable. It is probable that too 

 much significance need not be attached to 

 such association between the Greek goddess 

 of wisdom and her attendant owls, for Hindu 

 symbolism represented Ganesa, god of wis- 

 dom, with the head of an elephant, yet that 

 animal, which the natives of India know 

 better than the men of any other race, has 

 never figured in their folklore as a type noted 

 for its cunning. About the owl as we know 

 it to-day, with its spectacled face and blink- 

 ing eyes, there is nothing strikingly intelligent, 

 and schoolboy slang, hi which the word does 

 duty as synonymous with foolishness, dis- 

 covers a more accurate appreciation of these 

 birds. 



Seen at its worst, when surprised in the 

 glare of daylight and mobbed by a furious 

 116 



