no heart was touched. The human re- 
ception was that which I have known 
the snowy heron to receive, when, wan- 
dering from its southern home, it 
alights for awhile to cast its fair 
shadow upon the mirror of the 
Neshaminy, or such as that which, not 
many years ago, met the unfortunate 
deer which had escaped from a north- 
ern park to seek refuge in Bucks 
County woods. At first it trusted 
humanity; at last it fled in terror from 
the hue and cry of men in buggies and 
on horseback, of enemies with dogs 
and guns, who pursued it till strength 
failed and its blood dyed the grass. 
So the guns of humanity were 
loaded for the owls. The birds, were 
too strange, too interesting, too won- 
derful to live. The court house was 
no sanctuary. Late one August night 
one fell at a gun shot on the grass at 
the poplar trees. Then another on 
the pavement by the fountain. An- 
other, driven from its fellows, pursued 
in mid air by two crows, perished of a 
shot wound by the steps of a farm- 
house, whose acres it could have rid of 
field mice. 
The word went out in Doylestown 
that the owls were a nuisance. But we 
visited them and studied their ways, 
cries, and food, to find that they were 
not a nuisance in their town sanctuary. 
In twenty of the undigested pellets, 
characteristic of owls, left by them 
around the young birds, we found only 
the remains, as identified by Mr. S. N. 
Rhoads of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia, of the bones, 
skulls, and hair of the field mouse 
(Microtus pennsylvanicus) and star nose 
mole {Cottdy lura cristata). "They killed 
the pigeons," said someone, speaking 
without authority, after the manner of 
a gossip who takes away the character 
of a neighbor without proof. But they 
had not killed the pigeons. About 
twelve pairs of the latter, dwelling con- 
tinually with their squabs in the garret, 
though they had not moved out of the 
particular alcove appropriated by the 
owls, had not been disturbed. What 
better proof could be asked that the 
BARN OWL IS NOT A POULTRY DESTROYER? 
It was objected that the owls' cries 
kept citizens awake at night. But 
when, one night last week, we heard 
one of their low, rattling cries, scarcely 
louder than the note of a katydid, and 
learned that the janitor had never 
heard the birds hoot, and that the purr- 
ing and hissing of the feeding birds in 
the garret begins about sundown and 
ceases in the course of an hour, we 
could not believe that the sleep of any 
citizen ever is or has been so disturbed. 
When I saw the three little white 
creatures yesterday in the court house 
garret, making their strange bows as 
the candle light dazzled them, hissing 
with a noise as of escaping steam, as 
their brown eyes glowed, seemingly 
through dark-rimmed, heart-shaped 
masks, and as they bravely darted 
towards me when I came too near, I 
learned that one of the young had dis- 
appeared and that but one of the 
parent birds is left, the mother, who 
will not desert her offspring. 
On October 28 two young birds 
were taken from their relatives to live 
henceforth in captivity, and it may be 
that two members of the same perse- 
cuted band turned from the town and 
flew away to build the much-talked-of 
nest in a hollow apple tree at Me- 
chanics' Valley. If so, there again the 
untaught boy, agent of the mother that 
never thought, the Sunday school that 
never taught, and the minister of the 
Gospel that never spoke, was the re- 
lentless enemy of the rare, beautiful, 
and harmless birds. If he failed to 
shoot the parents, he climbed the tree 
and caught the young. 
If the hostility to the owls of the 
court house were to stop, if the caged 
birds were to be put back with their 
relatives, if the nocturnal gunners were 
to relent, would the remaining birds 
continue to add an interest to the 
public buildings by remaining there 
for the future as the guests of the 
town? Would the citizens of Doyles- 
town, by degrees, become interested in 
the pathetic fact of the birds' presence, 
and grow proud of their remarkable 
choice of sanctuary, as Dutch towns 
are proud of their storks? To us, the 
answer to these questions, with its hope 
of enlightenment, seems to lie in the 
hands of the mothers, of the teachers 
of Sunday schools, and of the ministers. 
224 
