HARMLESS BIRDS 85 



We may suppose that in Britain these supersti- 

 tions are gone for ever, killed and buried by board 

 schools and compulsory education. If they are 

 (there is room for an if) they have been succeeded 

 by a worse, the superstition of gamekeepers and 

 farmers. It is worse in effect, because these men 

 have guns, which their predecessors had not. And 

 it is more wicked, because it is founded on an ignor- 

 ance for which there is no excuse. How little harm 

 the barn owl is likely to do game may be inferred 

 from the fact that, when it makes its lodging in a 

 dovecot, the pigeons suffer no concern! Water- 

 ton (and no better authority could be quoted) scouts 

 the idea, common among farmers, that its business 

 there is to eat the pigeons' eggs. " They lay the 

 saddle," he says, " on the wrong horse. They ought 

 to put it on the rat." His predecessor in the estate 

 had allowed the owls to be destroyed and the rats 

 to multiply, and there were few young pigeons 

 in the dovecot. Waterton took strong measures to 

 exterminate the rats, but built breeding places for 

 the owls, and the dovecot, which they constantly 

 frequented, became prolific again. 



But granting that the owls did twice the injury 

 to game with which they are credited, it would 

 be repaid many times over by their services. Water- 

 ton well says that, if we knew its utility in thinning 

 the country of mice, it would be with us what the 

 ibis was with the Egyptians — a sacred bird. He 

 examined the pellets ejected by a pair of owls that 



