When Darkness has fallen. 95 



grey hath in her sober liv'ry all things clad," 

 then it is that the white owl comes abroad. 

 Passing the remains of an old baronial hall, its 

 piercing screech comes from the dismantled 

 tower. Here the owls have lived time out of 

 mind, and we have seen and heard them, asleep 

 and awake, through every hour of the day and 

 night. It is unnatural history to assert, as Mr. 

 Gray does, that the barn-owls ever mope or 

 mourn or are melancholy. Neither are they 

 grave monks nor anchorites nor pillared saints. 

 A boding bird or a dolorous ! Nonsense, they 

 are none of these. They issue forth as very 

 devils, and like another spirit of the night, sail 

 about seeking whom they may devour. The 

 barn-owl is the " screech " owl of bird literature 

 the brown owl the true hooting owl. This 

 species is found in heavily-timbered districts, 

 and it particularly loves the dark and sombre 

 gloom of resinous pine woods. But the barn- 

 owl is only the precursor of new life life 

 as animate under the night, as that of the birds 

 and butterflies under the day. We follow the 

 path by the river, and on through the meadows. 

 Among the nut-bush tops a bat is hawking for 

 night-flying insects. Great white moths get up 

 from the grass and go looming away through 

 the darkness. A bend in the stream brings us 

 to a quiet river reach with brown pebbles and a 

 shallow. 



