274 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



little persuasion we got him to talk to us, and the 

 note repeated again and again was like the cooing of 

 a dove, but more musical ; it was a softer, mellower, 

 and more human sound than the hoot of the wood 

 owl. 



Very different was the life of the white owl in 

 Chichester. At the inn where I stayed on my last 

 visit, I found three unhappy prisoners; two of these, 

 a jackdaw and a blackbird, were kept in rabbit- 

 hutch-like cages fixed against the ceiling of a long, 

 narrow, dimly-lighted passage* It was sad to see the 

 poor daw> the bird that loves soaring in wind and 

 sunshine, shut up in that narrow house in a perpetual 

 twilight, his head, when he sat on his perch, pressed 

 against the ceiling. He always perched at the same 

 end of his hutch, and the constant pressure of his 

 head on one spot had made a hole in the plaster 

 above. People were passing and repassing through 

 that passage all day long, but without noticing the 

 daw ; for he was hung above the line, so to say, and 

 to see him it was necessary to look up. Now, I ob- 

 served that whenever I paused before the cage and 

 looked up, the bird would instantly jump on to his 

 perch and, turning his back to me, fix his head against 

 the ceihng in the corner, and remain motionless in 

 that strange position. A silent, sullen daw — and no 

 wonder ! He did not, like Sterne's captive starling, 

 cry continually, " I can't get out ; " he made no cry, 

 and had no hope of ever feeling the wind and the sun. 



