OWL. 



369 



and when seen, appearing with something of jiulg-e- 

 like solemnity made them very readily convertible 

 into a sort of doom-birds. 



" The time of their appearance gave farther colour 

 to the superstition. Gloomy days, when the congre- 

 gated clouds hung low in the sky, but kept up by the 

 strong resistance of the warm earth and the breezeless 

 stillness of the summer air ; murky days, when the 

 sun ' was sick to dooms-day with eclipse,' all occasions 

 \vhen the heavens looked black upon the earth, but 

 produced stillness rather than storm, borrowed the 

 attributes of twilight, and so brought out the owl 

 brought it out by perfectly natural, and, according to 

 the laws of its being, necessary causes, but causes 

 which were not understood ; and the event, being 

 striking and mysterious, was remembered, all conco- 

 mitant mishap was remembered along with it; so that 

 the owl, which came out simply to see if there was 

 'a mouse stirring,' got the blame of the whole. 



" But, notwithstanding, owls are interesting birds, 

 and the sounds which they utter, though deep and 

 monotonous, have music for a well-tuned ear, the 

 part which they act in creation is, moreover, an im- 

 portant part ; and from the numbers of vermin which 

 they destroy, there are few birds more worthy of pro- 

 tection in an agricultural country than the owls. The 

 Athenians made them sacred to their patron goddess 

 for defending the labours of the loom ; and if we 

 cherished them about our farrn-house?, they would 

 do yeoman service in defence of the labours of the 

 plough. 



" Nor is the superstitious dread of them without its 

 use, or would the abolition of them be unmixed gain. 

 Mankind are all the better for some checks upon 

 them at those times when they are not watched by 

 their fellows ; and the actual presence of the owl 

 may have sometimes restrained the midnight plun- 

 derer from his purpose, as effectually as the mere 

 thought of rural wisdom enwigged with office. If so, 

 and there is little doubt of it, the owl was a cheap 

 policeman, keeping back one set of marauders, and 

 exacting, as his fee, the destruction of another." 

 Vol. I. p. 136-37. 



We shall now advert to the principal species of 

 (he owls. Three of these are represented in the 

 plate " OWLS ;" and they may be considered as speci- 

 mens of the owls of the cold, of the warm, and of the 

 middle latitudes. The snowy owl, toward the 

 reader's left hand, at the bottom of the plate, is the 

 typical owl of the extreme north, and among the 

 most formidable birds of the whole race. The one at 

 the bottom, marked Egyptian owl, is from Africa, a 

 country in which there are many owls, some of them 

 imperfectly known. The Virginian owl, at the top 

 of the plate, is a native of the central parts of North 

 America, and it is a powerfid bird. We may remark, 

 in passing, that the owls of warm countries are, 

 generally speaking, darker in their colours, more 

 nocturnal in their habits, and have the feet less 

 feathered than the owls of cold countries. The 

 depth of the forests, in some of their haunts, answers 

 nearly all the purposes of a twilight to them ; and, as 

 their pastures are richer than in the cold latitudes, 

 they are less powerfully winged, and altogether birds 

 of a softer description. Many of the arctic species 

 are common to the two continents ; or, at all events, 

 if they are specifically different, the difference is so 

 small, that, fur popular purposes, it is hardly worth 

 mentioning them. For this reason, we shall adopt 



NAT. HIST. VOL. III. 



Wilson's descriptions of one or two of them ; because 

 his decriptions, when given from his own observation, 

 never admit of improvement from anybody else. 



THE GREAT WHITE, OK SNOWY OWL (Slrix 

 nyctea}. This is what may properly be styled the 

 monarch of all the owls ; and, from its habitation, 

 its powers of endurance, and its bravery, it is one of 

 the most interesting of the feathered race. Its 

 dwelling is in the extreme north, where it finds its 

 food and rears its young among the rocky mountains 

 and isles, despite all the violence of the northern 

 storms. It is found in the north of Asia, in the north 

 of Europe, and in the north of America ; and it very 

 rarely makes its appearance even in the most north- 

 erly of the Scottish islands, and rarely, indeed, 

 on any part of the mainland, and never in the south. 

 It is tempered to the " thick-ribbed ice ;" and, when 

 our navigators made their somewhat Quixotic expe- 

 ditions in search of an impassable passage, from sea to 

 sea, by the north end of America, they found this owl 

 at the very extreme point which they reached, better 

 fitted for the intensity of the climate, by the hand of 

 nature, than they were by all the resources of their 

 art. 



Such a bird, found in such countries, is an object 

 of great interest to every one who has the least 

 feeling of nature ; and, therefore, after we have 

 copied Wilson's description of it, which is decidedly 

 the best, we shall offer two or three remarks on its 

 general economy. 



" The male," says Wilson, " measures twenty-two 

 inches and a half in length, and four feet six inches 

 in breadth; head and neck nearly white, with a few 

 spots of dull brown interspersed ; eyes sunk deep, 

 under projecting eyebrows, the plumage at their 

 internal angles fluted, or pressed in, to admit of direct 

 vision ; below this it bristles up, covering nearly the 

 whole bill ; the irides are of the most brilliant golden 

 yellow ; and the countenance, from the proportionate 

 smallness of the head, projection of the eyebrow, and 

 concavity of the plumage at the angle of the eye, 

 very different from that of any other of the genus ; 

 general colour of the body white, marked with lunated 

 spots of pale brown above, and with semicircular 

 dashes below ; femoral feathers long, and legs 

 covered, even over the claws, with long shaggy hair 

 of a dirty white colour ; the claws, when exposed, 

 appear large, much hooked, of a black colour, and 

 extremely sharp-pointed ; back white ; tail rounded 

 at the end, white, slightly dotted with pale brown 

 near the tips ; wings, when closed, reach near the 

 extremity of the tail ; vent-feathers large, strong 

 shafted, and extending also to the point of the tail ; 

 tipper part of the breast and belly plain white ; body 

 very broad and flat. The female," continues the 

 same admirable describer, " which measures two feet 

 in length, and five feet two inches in extent, is 

 covered more thickly with spots of a much darker 

 colour than those of the male ; the chin, throat, face, 

 belly, and vent, are white ; femoral feathers white, 

 long, and shaggy, marked with a few heart-shaped 

 spots of brown ; legs covered to the claws with long 

 white hairy down ; rest of the plumage white, every 

 feather spotted or barred with dark brown, largest on 

 the wing-quills, where the brown margins are about 

 two inches apart ; fore part of the crown thickly 

 marked with roundish black spots ; tail crossed with 

 bands of broad brownish spots ; shafts of all the 

 plumage white ; bill and claws, as in the male, black ; 

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