264 GREAT HORNED OWL. 



young rabbits, squirrels, rats, mice, partridges, and small birds 

 of various kinds. It has been often known to prowl about the 

 farmhouse, and carry off chickens from roost. A very large 

 one, wing-broken while on a foraging excursion of this kind, 

 was kept about the house for several days, and at length 

 disappeared, no one knew how. Almost every day after this, 

 hens and chickens also disappeared, one by one, in an unac- 

 countable manner, till, in eight or ten days, very few were 

 left remaining. The fox, the minx, and weasel were alter- 

 nately the reputed authors of this mischief, until one morning, 

 the old lady herself, rising before day to bake, in passing 

 towards the oven, surprised her late prisoner, the owl, regaling 

 himself on the body of a newly-killed hen ! The thief instantly 

 made for his hole under the house, from whence the enraged 

 matron soon dislodged him with the brush handle, and without 

 mercy despatched him. In this snug retreat were found the 

 greater part of the feathers, and many large. fragments, of her 

 whole family of chickens. 



There is something in the character of the owl so recluse, 

 solitary, and mysterious, something so discordant in the tones 

 of its voice, heard only amid the silence and gloom of night, 

 and in the most lonely and sequestered situations, as to have 

 strongly impressed the minds of mankind in general with 

 sensations of awe and abhorrence of the whole tribe. The 

 poets have indulged freely in this general prejudice ; and in 

 their descriptions and delineations of midnight storms and 

 gloomy scenes of nature, the owl is generally introduced to 

 heighten the horror of the picture. Ignorance and superstition, 

 in all ages and in all countries, listen to the voice of the owl, 

 and even contemplate its physiognomy with feelings of disgust, 

 and a kind of fearful awe. The priests or conjurors among 

 some of our Indian nations have taken advantage of the 

 reverential horror for this bird, and have adopted the great 

 horned oiul, the subject of the present account, as the symbol 

 or emblem of their office. "Among the Creeks," says Mr 

 Bartram, in his Travels, p. 504, " the junior priests or students 



