70 OWLS 



fluffy feathers have lost all their fluffiness, and are 

 glued to his side. His body, to all appearance, has 

 shrunk to half its usual size. The water drips from 

 his venerable countenance, his eyes stand out 

 doubly, and his whole head seems little else but a 

 pair of eyes and a beak. He shivers from head to 

 foot. But a voluntary ducking in a basin is one 

 thing ; an involuntary and reiterated ducking, in a 

 duck pond, by a duck which is tied fast to him, is 

 quite another. Each time the duck rises to the 

 surface, the owl looks more pitiable, and is 

 welcomed only by the pitiless laughter of the 

 onlookers, till death by drowning puts an end to 

 his sufferings.^ 



A story related by H. L. Meyer, the well-known 

 ornithologist, blends so closely the comic and the 

 tragic elements, which are, as I have shown, so 

 intermixed in the history of the owl, that I cannot 

 help giving the drift of it here. The wife of the 

 gardener had been, for some time, ill ; and the 

 master, passing one Sunday morning, by the cottage, 

 noticed that its tenant and his two sons were 

 dressed in black, and, to all appearance, plunged in 

 the deepest melancholy. He offered his condolences, 

 but the husband hastened to explain that it was not 

 * My Feathered Friends, by J. G. Wood, p. 143. 



