WOOD NOTES WILD. 103 



Owls have been hooted at perhaps as long as they have 

 been hooting. " As stupid as an owl," " tough as a b'iled 

 owl," these expressions of reproach are still in vogue. 

 But let us give the owl his due. An intelligent and 

 apparently honest man tells me that he once ate of an 

 owl fattened on chickens, by the way, niched from him 

 with surpassing cunning and found it as sweet and 

 tender fowl as he had ever tasted. So it seems the 

 owl is not always stupid nor always tough. Few birds 

 are clad in finer raiment, and no other inhabitants of the 

 air fly with so velvet-like, so silent wings. 



