CHERUBIM 23 



ing up its claws, as its manner is, and contracting 

 its body into the smallest possible dimensions, and 

 spreading its large wings, seems, like the mysterious 

 symbolical figure, once familiar in Egyptian and 

 Jewish tabernacles or temples, and still to be seen in 

 many of our churches, to be "all eyes and wings." 

 Little wonder that one of the would-be sportsmen 

 fled away with uplifted hands and hair on end, 

 affrighted at the act of sacrilege he had committed, 

 while his companion cried out, " Ah, poor creature, 

 Heaven forgive him, he has shot a Cherubim." * 



The magnificent Snowy owl, is a very rare visi- 

 tant to England. Two specimens, however, have 

 been seen in Dorset, in recent times. One of them 

 I was lucky enough myself, some thirty years ago, to 

 flush in the middle of winter, in Puddletown Heath. 

 It settled again about two hundred yards off, and I 

 was able to put it up repeatedly, getting, each time, 

 quite near to the bird in all its majesty. The other 

 was seen I wish I could add that it had not been 

 killed at Langton near Blandford. But the proper 

 habitat of the Snowy owl is the eternal snows of 

 the north, where it is believed to possess peculiar 

 powers of prophecy. In the most solemn assemblies 



* Sporting Anecdotes, Original and Select, by an Amateur 

 Sportsman. Albion Press, 1804. 



