18 The Food of the Owls, 
these States for the more remunerative business of hawk and owl 
shooting. Thousands were killed and the Eaptores seemed in a fair 
way to be exterminated. 
This merciless slaughter arrested the attention of ornithological 
and scientific societies, and they at once set to work to devise means- 
to check the work of destruction. 
Committees and individuals were appointed to investigate the food 
habits of the hawks and owls. Hundreds of dissections of stomachs 
were made, and after a thorough research the following report was. 
" Resolved, That the hawks and owls are of great benefit to tho 
farmer and render him far greater service than injury, and that it 
is unwise to select any of them for destruction.'' 
This report was concurred in by the leading naturalists through- 
out the length and breadth of the land, and as a consequence these 
obnoxious laws have been repealed. 
A partial exception was made against the Sharp-shinned Hawk, 
Coopers' Hawk, and the Great-horned Owl. 
It is to the latter bird that I will mainly give attention. 
As the eagle heads the list of the diurnal birds of prey, so is the- 
Great-horned Owl the most noble of the nocturnal birds, and the 
ancients chose well when they assigned to Minerva this bird as the 
emblem of wisdom. 
Owing to a suitable habitat probably more of these owls are to be 
found in the Spoon River country of Central Illinois than in any 
other section of like limits in the United States. From my boy- 
hood to the present they have always excited within me a lively in- 
terest and curiosity. 
Their unsavory reputation as chicken thieves has led to their be- 
ing destroyed whenever possible, and as a consequence in many 
parts of the country where they were once quite common they are 
now extinct. 
This bad reputation and consequent destruction of this owl, in my 
experience and observation, is not all deserved. 
Many times when a lad have my slumbers b6en broken in upoa 
by my mother's voice calling up the stairway, *'Get up quick ! an 
owl is after the chickens." A careful investigation would reveal 
the intruder perched in the top of an apple-tree or on a limb close 
by the side of an old hen that would be waking the echoes of the 
night with her squalling. The owl in the meantime would be bow- 
ing and swaying his body to and fro, occasionally uttering a low 
