no heart was touched. The human re- 

 ception was that which I have known 

 the snowy heron to receive, when, wan- 

 dering from its southern home, it 

 alights for awhile to cast its fair 

 shadow upon the mirror of the 

 Neshaminy, or such as that which, not 

 many years ago, met the unfortunate 

 deer which had escaped from a north- 

 ern park to seek refuge in Bucks 

 County woods. At first it trusted 

 humanity; at last it fled in terror from 

 the hue and cry of men in buggies and 

 on horseback, of enemies with dogs 

 and guns, who pursued it till strength 

 failed and its blood dyed the grass. 



So the guns of humanity were 

 loaded for the owls. The birds, were 

 too strange, too interesting, too won- 

 derful to live. The court house was 

 no sanctuary. Late one August night 

 one fell at a gun shot on the grass at 

 the poplar trees. Then another on 

 the pavement by the fountain. An- 

 other, driven from its fellows, pursued 

 in mid air by two crows, perished of a 

 shot wound by the steps of a farm- 

 house, whose acres it could have rid of 

 field mice. 



The word went out in Doylestown 

 that the owls were a nuisance. But we 

 visited them and studied their ways, 

 cries, and food, to find that they were 

 not a nuisance in their town sanctuary. 



In twenty of the undigested pellets, 

 characteristic of owls, left by them 

 around the young birds, we found only 

 the remains, as identified by Mr. S. N. 

 Rhoads of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia, of the bones, 

 skulls, and hair of the field mouse 

 {Microttis pennsylvanicus) and star nose 

 mo\e.{Co?idyluracristata). "They killed 

 the pigeons," said someone, speaking 

 without authority, after the manner of 

 a gossip who takes away the character 

 of a neighbor without proof. But they 

 had not killed the pigeons. About 

 twelve pairs of the latter, dwelling con- 

 tinually with their squabs in the garret, 

 though they had not moved out of the 

 particular alcove appropriated by the 

 owls, had not been disturbed. What 

 better proof could be asked that the 



BARN OWL IS NOT A POULTRY DESTROYER? 



It was objected that the owls' cries 

 kept citizens awake at night. But 



when, one night last week, we heard 

 one of their low, rattling cries, scarcely 

 louder than the note of a katydid, and 

 learned that the janitor had never 

 heard the birds hoot, and that the purr- 

 ing and hissing of the feeding birds in 

 the garret begins about sundown and 

 ceases in the course of an hour, we 

 could not believe that the sleep of any 

 citizen ever is or has been so disturbed. 



When I saw the three little white 

 creatures yesterday in the court house 

 garret, making their strange bows as 

 the candle light dazzled them, hissing 

 with a noise as of escaping steam, as 

 their brown eyes glowed, seemingly 

 through dark-rimmed, heart-shaped 

 masks, and as they bravely darted 

 towards me when I came too near, I 

 learned that one of the young had dis- 

 appeared and that but one of the 

 parent birds is left, the mother, who 

 will not desert her offspring. 



On October 28 two young birds 

 were taken from their relatives to live 

 henceforth in captivity, and it may be 

 that two members of the same perse- 

 cuted band turned from the town and 

 flew away to build the much-talked-of 

 nest in a hollow apple tree at Me- 

 chanics' Valley. If so, there again the 

 untaught boy, agent of the mother that 

 never thought, the Sunday school that 

 never taught, and the minister of the 

 Gospel that never spoke, was the re- 

 lentless enemy of the rare, beautiful, 

 and harmless birds. If he failed to 

 shoot the parents, he climbed the tree 

 and caught the young. 



If the hostility to the owls of the 

 court house were to stop, if the caged 

 birds were to be put back with their 

 relatives, if the nocturnal gunners were 

 to relent, would the remaining birds 

 continue to add an interest to the 

 public buildings by remaining there 

 for the future as the guests of the 

 town? Would the citizens of Doyles- 

 town, by degrees, become interested in 

 the pathetic fact of the birds' presence, 

 and grow proud of their remarkable 

 choice of sanctuary, as Dutch towns 

 are proud of their storks? To us, the 

 answer to these questions, with its hope 

 of enlightenment, seems to lie in the 

 hands of the mothers, of the teachers 

 of Sunday schools, and of the ministers. 



224 



