ig8 WINTERS EVE 



turns and he peers down on the ground. 

 The eyes are fixed, but the head can be 

 turned completely round. Those large ears, 

 hidden by the tiny feathers the ear-cavity 

 being twice the size of an eye take in 

 every sound, even as the eyes can see in 

 the dark night. The faint squeak came 

 from a rat that runs swiftly on the trail of 

 another. The next moment his body is 

 seized in a grip of death he, too, screams, 

 and is borne upward, limp and dead, to be 

 devoured at leisure. The owl's beak opens 

 to a wide gape, and a deep contralto hoot, 

 bubbling and quavering, carries to his mate 

 who hunts in the distant copse. 



Heard thus in the loneliness of the winter 

 night, there seems infinite sadness in the 

 deep mellow cries of these night fliers. To 

 hear an owl hooting repeatedly around the 

 cottage at night is supposed, in the country, 

 to portend death. It is easy to imagine 

 how such a superstition arose. The species 

 of owl that hoots, sounding like the call of 



