BARN AND BELFRY 7 



"ivy-mantled tower," where he may "mope" to 

 his heart's content, 



" And to the moon complain 

 Of such as, wandering near his sacred bower, 

 Molest his ancient, solitary reign." 



Or as Tennyson, always true to Nature in his 

 mention of birds, puts it 



u Alone and warming his five wits, 

 The white owl in the belfry sits." 



I have found the white owl "at home" in many 

 such belfries, where he has often allowed me to 

 handle him, rather than shake off his drowsiness and 

 trust himself to the light of day. I have often 

 wondered what a bird with so exquisitely elaborated 

 and sensitive an organ of hearing as he has, can do, 

 when the Sunday-morning bells ring out, with all 

 their reverberations, within a few feet of him. Can 

 he, by closing the operculum or flap of skin with which 

 Nature has supplied him, sufficiently deaden the 

 ding-dong bell? Or has he learned, as the result 

 of long-transmitted experiences, that the agony, 

 though sharp, is short ? Or, like the more 

 intelligent dog who often knows that he must put 

 on his best manners when Sunday comes does he 

 realise that, on each returning seventh day, the 



