J6 NATURE AND WOODCRAFT. 



Owls, and unfortunately most people take their 

 ideas of them from the poets. It is unnatural 

 to assert, as they do, that Barn Owls ever mope, 

 or mourn, or are melancholy. Neither are they 

 grave monks, nor anchorites, nor pillared saints. 

 A boding bird or a dolorous ! Nonsense ! they 

 are none of these. They issue forth as very 

 devils, and, like another spirit of the night, 

 sail about seeking whom they may devour. 



Poets write by day, and Owls fly by night ; 

 and, doubtless, Mr. Gray and his school have 

 their opinion of owls from staring at stuffed 

 specimens in glass cases, or at the living birds 

 surprised in the full light of day, when they 

 will be seen blinking, nodding, and hissing at 

 each other, very unlike the wise representatives 

 of Minerva. Christopher North is the only 

 writer who has done justice to Owls — or justice 

 to poets, for the matter of that — by his denun- 

 ciation of their epithets and false images. He 

 knew well that the White Owl never mopes, 

 but holds its revels through the livelong night, 

 when all else is hushed and still. Most birds 

 are stoics compared to Owls, and those who 

 cultivate their acquaintance know that they 

 have no time wherein to make their poetical 



