certain, indescribable creations faith genera- 

 tors. But the greenest, homeliest, unlikeliest, 

 babiest babes I ever encountered were these two 

 in the hole. I wish Walt Whitman had seen 

 them. He would have written a poem. They 

 defy my powers of portrayal, for they challenge 

 the whole mob of my normal instincts. 



But quite as astonishing as the appearance of 

 the young owls was the presence beneath their 

 feet of the head of a half-grown muskrat, the 

 hind quarters of two frogs, one large meadow - 

 vole, and parts of four mice, with many other 

 pieces too small to identify. These all were 

 fresh the crumbs of one night's dinner, the 

 leavings of one night's catch. If these were the 

 fragments only, what would be a conservative 

 estimate of the night's entire catch ? 



Gilbert White tells of a pair of owls that built 

 under the eaves of Selborne Church, that he 

 "minuted'' with his "watch for an hour to- 

 gether," and found that they returned to the 

 nest, the one or the other, "about once in every 

 five minutes " with a mouse or some little beast 

 for the young. Twelve mice an hour ! Suppose 

 they hunted only two evening hours a day? 

 [267] 



