WILL-O'-THE-WISP 89 



and it falls into fearsome pantomimic attitudes and 

 grimaces, like a clown trying to frighten a child. 

 And now a new horror has been added to the barn 

 owl. The numerous letters which appeared in The 

 Times and were summarised, with comments, by 

 Sir T. Digby Pigott, C.B., in The Contemporary 

 Review of July 1908, leave no reasonable room for 

 doubt that this bird sometimes becomes brightly 

 luminous, and is the will-o'-the-wisp for believing in 

 which we are deriding our forefathers. All things 

 considered, I cannot withhold my sympathy and 

 some respect for the superstition of aged house- 

 keepers, Romans and Indians. For that of game- 

 keepers and farmers I have neither. All our new 

 schemes of "Nature study" will surely deserve 

 the reproach of futility if, in the next generation, 

 every farmhouse in England has not its own Owl 

 Tower for the encouragement of this friend of man. 



