42 OWLS 



blinking its eyes with all the sleepy majesty of the 

 aw, had exclaimed, " Dear me, how like papa ! " 

 The name, thenceforward, stuck to it ; and, years 

 afterwards, the butler, whose business it was to see 

 after the eagle owls, and who was not a little proud 

 of his charge, rushed up, in a state of pleased 

 excitement and of domestic importance, into the 

 Duke of Norfolk's study. " What is the matter?" 

 said the Duke. " Please your Grace," was the 

 reply, " Lord Eldon has laid an egg." 



It was the eagle owl, doubtless, which was the 

 "imperial" bird whose appearance, on rare occasions, 

 in Rome, filled the Romans with terror, as por- 

 tending calamity to the State at large, and of 

 which Pliny the Elder, * mixing fiction with fact, 

 and imagination with observation, the former some- 

 times predominating gives the following significant 

 account : " The great-horned owl, when it appears, 

 foretells nothing but evil, and if auspices which import 

 the public weal are being taken at the time, is more 

 to be dreaded than any other bird. It haunts waste 

 places, nay, spots which are terrible and inacces- 

 sible. It is a portent of the night ; and makes its 

 presence known by no kind of song, but rather by 

 sobs and moans. Accordingly, whenever it shows 

 * Pliny's Natural History, x., pp. 12-16. 



