Oh. PLAIN 



sparrow hawk or hobby should make its appear- 

 ance, the whole community will he up at once : 

 a proof that the ham owl is not looked upon as 

 a had, or even a suspicious, character by the 

 inhabitants of the dove-cot.* 



Owls utter a very peculiar a#d 

 melancholy note, particularly the 

 tawny owl, which gives the tre- 

 mulous too-wlio, by which super- 

 stitious people become alarmed : 



The very name of the owl is a name of lamen- 

 tation, expressive of the sound of its note, which 

 is one of the most melancholy love songs in the 

 whole chorus of nature. Superstition has accor- 

 dingly laid hold of the birdas one of the instru- 

 ments by means of which to bind the ignorant 

 in the fetters of fear ; and the circumstances 

 attendant upon the owl, although they admit of 

 being turned to better and even delightful pur- 

 poses, have certainly an aptitude to be so per- 

 verted. 



Deep shady groves, hollow trees, crumbling 

 ruins clad with ivy, steeples and churches, with 

 their associations of graves and ghosts— all that 

 seem dim to human reason, all that stand monu- 

 mental of the works of nature, or of man and 

 his works, is linked to the owl by the closest 

 and most general associations. The owls in 

 such places are often heard but seldom seen ; 

 when heard, heard in the gloom and stillness o£ 

 night, and when seen, appearing with some- 

 thing of judge-like solemnity, made them very 

 readily convertible into a sort of doom-birds. 



The time of their appearance gave further 

 colour to the superstition. Gloomy days, when 

 the congregated clouds hung low in the sky, 

 but kept up by the strong resistance of the 

 warm earth and the breezeless stillness of the 

 summer air ; murky days, when the sun " was 

 sick to doomsday with eclipse ; " all occasions 

 when the heavens looked black upon the earth, 

 but produced stillness rather than storm, bor- 

 rowed the attributes of twilight, and so brought 

 out the owl — brought it out by perfectly natural, 

 and, according to the laws of its being, neces- 

 sary causes, but causes which were not under- 

 stood ; and the event being striking and mys- 

 terious, was remembered— all concomitant mis- 

 hap was remembered along with it ; so that 

 the owl, which came out simply to see if there 

 was a " mouse stirring," got the blame of the 

 whole, f • 



Ostriches, 18, were regarded by 

 the ancients as partly bird, and 

 partly quadruped. The large 

 thighs, divested of feathers, are 

 more like those of a quadruped 

 than of a bird ; added to which, 

 the foot bears a strong resem- 

 blance to that of the camel : hence 

 it was once called the camel bird. 



* Mr. Waterton. 



f Feathered Tribes of the British Islands. 



TEACHING . 125 



Like the camel, this bird inhabits 

 the sandy desert, beneath the 

 burning sun. It is found in the 

 sandy plains of Arabia, and of 

 Africa, from the north to the 

 south. Ostrich hens lay all their 

 eggs together in one nest, which 

 is formed by merely scraping up 

 the sand, to form a circular hol- 

 low, about the size which one 

 bird can cover. The hens re- 



18 



/ 



429. 



lieve each other in the duty of 

 sitting during the day ; and the 

 male takes his turn at night, 

 when his greater strength is. re- 

 quired to protect the eggs, or the 

 young, from the attacks of jack- 

 als, tiger-cats, and other enemies. 

 These animals are not unfre- 

 quently found lying dead near 

 the nest, killed by a blow from 

 the foot of this powerful bird. 

 As many as sixty eggs are some- 

 times found in and near an 

 ostrich's nest ; but a smaller 

 number is more common. Each 

 female lays from twelve to six- 

 teen eggs. They continue to lay 

 during;- incubation, and even after 

 the young birds are hatched ; the 

 eggs thus laid are not placed in 

 the nest, but around it, and are 

 said to be designed to feed the 



