THE GREAT HORNED OWL 
225 
savage hunger must be sated, and while he seems to 
reject nothing that has life, the perching birds are his 
most frequent victims. Even in winter he grows fat 
through ceaseless depredations. To see him flying 
at night across the disk of the full moon, his silent 
wings sweeping through the naked branches of an 
Elm, is an event to be remembered — even more rare 
than a daylight meeting, face to face, in the close 
shade of a Cedar swamp. His tremulous monotone 
is the true voice of the woods. Weird it may be, 
repeated again and again, expressive in its expression- 
less evenness, and so oppressively spiritless that it 
seems to breathe a pulsating spirit through the silence 
that it cannot disturb. 
p 
