SPORT OF BUTE. 115 



has proved the most pleasant and amusing of pets. 

 It was early taught to quit its cage in the kitchen 

 and devour the flies, which were so dexterously 

 snapped up that one's eye often could not follow 

 the capture. The windows are never shut when 

 "the stare" is hunting, and it often flies round 

 the lawn for half-a-clay, but always comes back to 

 its cage before dusk. Our starling, however, is 

 not sentimental, and, if he were, has no right to 

 the plaintive plea, " I can't get out." 



One feels a kind of reverence for those birds 

 whose life is spent in the silence and solemnity of 

 night; and the music in which they vent their 

 contemplations, though always in the minor key, 

 is listened to with more interest, and perhaps 

 scarcely less pleasure, than that of sunshine and 

 the day. The spectre-like ways and melancholy 

 hootings of these night-lovers please well the 

 fancy ; while the oft-repeated plaint of the wood- 

 owl, from ivied tree or mouldering tower, is an- 

 swered, perhaps, by some inner second of our own. 

 Even the wild screech of the white owl, as it flits 

 stealthily and rapidly along, has a power over us 

 peculiarly its own ; and one is amazed that so true 



