WOOD NOTES WILD. 103 
Owls have been hooted at perhaps as long as they have 
been hooting. “As stupid as an owl,” “tough as a biiled 
owl,” — these expressions of reproach are still in vogue. 
But let us give the owl his due. An intelligent and 
apparently honest man tells me that he once ate of an 
owl — fattened on chickens, by the way, filched from him 
with surpassing cunning—and found it as sweet and 
tender fowl as he had ever tasted. So it seems the 
owl is not always stupid nor always tough. Few birds 
are clad in finer raiment, and no other inhabitants of the 
air fly with so velvet-like, so silent wings. 
