THE POLICE OF NATURE. 
223 
the owl for out-door services ; and whatever advantages a 
cat may have over the owl for killing mice in close quarters, 
are more than counterbalanced by his powers to pick them off 
the thatches, and pounce on them in the open grounds, where 
the cat never goes ; and such are the advantages given him 
by the use of his wings, that he can scour an acre of ground, 
hedge-rows too, while the cat is watching at a single mouse- 
hole. But so similar are the two in appearance, habits, and 
manners, that to sum the owl up in little, we may call him 
the feathered or flying cat. 
There is another peculiarity also with regard to their 
manner of breeding. The hen generally lays three or four 
eggs ; but often, before the young ones are half fledged, she 
is sitting again on a fresh lot of eggs in the same nest. 
Consequently, if farmers only protected them, they would 
soon have owls in abundance ; and, to use Mr. Waterton's 
words, they would repay them at least a hundred-fold for 
their trouble by the enormous numbers of mice, insects, and 
young rats they w^ould nightly consume. 
I have devoted some little time to the consideration of 
this subject, because I am satisfied that farmers in general 
have never given these birds that serious consideration they 
merit ; or they never would have allowed such invaluable 
creatures to be treated as they have been. Farmers should 
know that owls, cats, and poisons are their only securities 
against those destructive little pests, the mouse and shreW 
tribes. But of the three, the owl is by far the most valu- 
able. As to the use of traps for catching mice and shrews 
on a farm, 'tis somewhat like killing a fox by a hair at a 
time ; for they increase much faster than you can catch 
them. 
Now let us suppose a farmer to have only thirty barn 
owls upon a farm of one hundred and fifty acres. That 
would average one owl to every five acres. Then let us 
average them to catch but two mice each, nightly, the year 
round ! and at the end of twelve months, pray what would 
be the amount of mice destroyed ? Not less than 21,900 I 
Let us further imagine these mice to be all living, and that 
ten of them will eat and waste one wine-glass of grain, at 
strike measure, in twenty-four hours, what would it take to 
keep the whole ? No less than four bushels, two gallons^, 
