The Barn Owl. 69 



animated possessions (including his unhappy wife) 

 simply as matters of a certain money value, to be made 

 to pay or to be got rid of. Not to pursue his revolting 

 career through all its stages, we will merely hint that 

 he probably ends by committing a double parricide, 

 and being righteously condemned to the gallows, and is 

 reprieved only by the appropriate tenderness of the 

 Home Secretary." 



There is more meaning and practical suggestion 

 under this light, half-bantering vein, than in many a 

 severe treatise on humanity. 



Mr. St. John, in closing the fourteenth chapter of 

 his " Wild Sports and Natural History of the High- 

 lands," has this confession : " Though naturally all 

 men are carnivorous, and therefore animals of prey, 

 and inclined by nature to hunt and destroy other 

 creatures, and although I share in this natural instinct 

 to a great extent, I have far more pleasure in seeing 

 these different animals enjoying themselves about me, 

 and in observing their different habits, than I have in 

 hunting down and destroying them," which is the very 

 spirit of the true naturalist and sportsman. 



I have spoken of the surprise of the barn owl as I 

 stood by the pond musing in the moonlight, but there 

 are other nightly visitors and passers-by. The truth 

 is, nature has no sleeping time; when one set of busy 

 workers leaves off, another comes on, and she knows 

 well how to provide for them all. If there are abun- 

 dant supplies of flowers, bright-coloured, and even 

 garish, to front the sun and close their eyes with the 

 falling shadows of eventide, she has also some fav- 

 ourites which open their sweets to the night and deny 

 them to the day, and show their charms only in the 

 darkness, that the night-fliers may also have their work 



