CLASS II. AVES: OEDER 1. RAPTORES. 65 
flitting specters in the twilight, or in the deeper shadows of night, and then, uttering strange and 
melancholy cries from the depths of gloomy forests, or ghastly ruins, or perched on the black, 
crumbling towers of some ghost-haunted castle, accursed in popular imagination — they very natu- 
rally became associated with the loathed and dreaded powers of darkness. Their strange forms, 
their large heads, staring eyes, and uncouth gestures, served to deepen these sinister impressions, 
so that they came to be regarded as birds of ill omen, and even as messengers of coming doom. 
Shakspeare says : 
" Out, ye owls ! nothing but songs of death !" 
and thus expresses the common sentiment of the time. Spencer says, in a similar vein : 
" The rueful stritch still waiteth on the beere, 
The whistler shrill that whoso heares doth die." 
And again : 
"The ill-faced oule, Death's dreaded messenger." 
And an old dramatist says : 
" When screech-owls croak upon the chimney -tops, 
It's certain then you of a corse shall hear." 
Pliny had said, ages before, to use the quaint translation of Philemon Holland, " The scritch- 
owle betokeneth alwais some heavie newes, and is most execrable and accursed and unseemly in 
the presages of publick affaires. Ee keepeth ever in deserts, and loveth not onely such unpeopled 
places, but also that are horrible and hard of accesse. In summer he is the verie monster of the 
night, neither crying nor singing out cleere, but uttering a certain heavie grone of dolefuU moning. 
And therefore if he be scene to fiie either within cities, or otherwise abroad in any place, it is not 
for good, but prognosticateth some fearful misfortune. Howbeit, I myself know that he hath 
sitten upon many houses of privat men, and yet no deadly accident followed thereupon. He 
never flieth directly at ease, as he would himselfe, but evermore sidelong and byas, as if he were 
carried away with the wind or somewhat else." 
Hood, in his poem of the "Haunted House," has grouped the owl with other objects of general 
horror and aversion, in a manner forcibly to illustrate the popular superstitions to which we allude : 
" On every side the aspect was the same — 
All ruined, desolate, forlorn, and savage ; 
Jfo hand or foot within the precinct came 
To rectify or ravage. 
"For over all there hung a cloud of fear ; 
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, 
And said, as plain as whisper in th*e ear, 
' The house is haunted !' 
" The centipede along the threshold crept ; 
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle, 
And in its winding-sheet the maggot slept 
At every nook and angle. 
" The startled bats flew oxit — bird after bird ; 
The dcreech-otvl overliead began to flutter, 
And seemed to mock tTie cry that she had heard 
Some dying victim utter. 
" The wood-louse drooped and rolled into a ball, 
Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic ; 
And nameless beetles ran along the wall 
In universal panic. 
" The subtle spider, that from overhead 
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error, 
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread 
Ran with a nimble terror. 
"Huge drops rolled down the walls as if they wept. 
And where the cricket used to chirp so shrilly, 
The toad was squatting, and the lizard crept 
On that damp hearth and chilly." 
Vol. II— 9. 
