THE YOUNG BROOD 13 



the love of a mother is generally proportioned to the 

 trouble she has taken in rearing her children, how 

 great must be the affection the vropyri, as the Greeks 

 called it of the barn owl for her brood, and how 

 vast the quantity of rats or mice which she must 

 have carried, during those long weeks, to them ! 



Waterton, a close observer of bird life, says in 

 his charming Essays, that a pair of barn owls which 

 he watched, would bring a mouse to their nest every 

 ten or fifteen minutes, and that in sixteen months 

 they deposited over a bushel of pellets in the old 

 gateway which they inhabited ; while Gilbert 

 White, the prince of all observers, whose letters will 

 be a joy for ever to the naturalist ever old and 

 ever new writes thus of the habits of the barn owl, 

 which he carefully watched : 



We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair 

 of white owls that constantly breed under the eaves 

 of this church. As I have paid good attention to 

 the manner of life of these birds during their season 

 of breeding, which lasts the summer through, 

 the following remarks may not, perhaps, be 

 unacceptable. About an hour before sunset (for 

 then the mice begin to run) they sally forth in quest 

 of prey, and hunt all round the hedges of meadows 

 and small enclosures for them, which seem to be 

 their only food. In this irregular country we can 



