THE BROWN OWL 55 



round, and expressive ; his feathers finely barred 

 and extraordinarily soft and fluffy ; yet they 

 stand out nearly at right angles to his body, 

 and so make it appear not merely larger, but 

 much larger perhaps twice as large than it really 

 is. It is difficult to believe that Keat's famous 

 line, 



" The owl for all his feathers was a' cold," 



can ever have been true of him. In his soft, 

 silky, noiseless flight he stretches out his legs 

 behind him, to serve, as Gilbert White remarked, 

 as a balance to his heavy head. The female lays 

 her five, almost perfectly round, eggs early in 

 March in the deep hollow of a tree to which 

 she sticks year after year. Her young are the 

 queerest little balls of grey woolly down, and 

 have been well compared to a "pair of Shetland 

 worsted stockings rolled up, such as might have 

 belonged to Tarn o 1 Shanter." They remain 

 long in the nest or perched just outside it ; and 

 when, at last, they have found their wings, they flit 

 from tree to tree, constantly uttering their baby cry 

 " tu-wheet, tu-wheet," while their ever anxious 

 mother, by way of keeping them together and 

 assuring them, if they do not know it already, 



