152 ACCIPITRES. 



very delightful purposes, have certainly an aptitude to be so 

 perverted. 



Deep shady groves, hollow trees, crumbling ruins clad with 

 ivy, steeples and churches with their associations of graves 

 and ghosts, all that seems dim to human reason, all that 

 stands monumental of the works of nature, or of man and his 

 works, is linked to the owl by the closest and the most 

 general associations. The owls, in such places, often heard, 

 but seldom seen : when heard, heard in the gloom and still- 

 ness of the night ; r and when seen, appearing with something 

 of judge-like solemnity, made them very readily convertible 

 into a sort of " doom-birds." 



The times of their appearance gave farther colour to the 

 superstition. Gloomy days, when the congregated clouds 

 hung low in the sky, but were kept up by the strong resist- 

 ance of the warm earth and the breezeless stillness of the sum- 

 mer air ; murky days, when the sun " was sick to doomsday 

 with eclipse ;" all occasions when the heavens looked black 

 upon the earth, but produced stillness rather than storm, 

 borrowed the attributes of twilight, and so brought out the 

 owl, brought it out by perfectly natural, and, according 'to 

 the laws of its being, necessary causes, but causes which were 

 not understood ; and the event being striking and myste- 

 rious, was remembered, all concomitant mishap was remem- 

 bered along with it ; so that the owl, which came out simply 

 to see if there was " a mouse stirring," got the blame of the 

 whole. 



But, notwithstanding, owls are interesting birds, and the 

 sounds which they utter, though deep and monotonous, have 

 music for a well-tuned ear. The part which they act in cita- 

 tion is, moreover, an important part ; and from the numbers 

 of vermin which they destroy, there are few birds more wor- 

 thy of protection in an agricultural country than the owls. 

 The Athenians made them sacred to their patron goddess, for 



