THE CROW. 
73 
less and rapacious enemy. I hastened to the spot whence 
the sounds proceeded, and, to my great surprise, found a 
Crow lying on the ground, just expiring, and, seated upon 
the body of the yet warm and bleeding quarry, a large 
brown owl , who was beginning to make a meal of the unfor- 
tunate robber of corn-fields. Perceiving my approach, he 
forsook his prey with evident reluctance, and flew into a 
tree at a little distance, where he sat watching all my 
movements, alternately regarding, with longing eyes, the 
victim he had been forced to leave, and darting at me no 
very friendly looks, that seemed to reproach me for having 
deprived him of his expected regale. 
u I confess that the scene before me was altogether novel 
and surprising. I am but little conversant with natural 
history ) but I had always understood, that the depredations 
of the owl were confined to the smaller birds, and animals 
of the lesser kind, such as mice, young rabbits, &c., and 
that he obtained his prey rather by fraud and stratagem, 
than by open rapacity and violence. I was the more con- 
firmed in this belief, from the recollection of a passage in 
Macbeth, which now forcibly recurred to my memory. The 
courtiers of King Duncan are recounting to each other the 
various prodigies that preceded his death, and one of them 
relates to his wondering auditors, that 
An eagle, towering in his pride of place, 
Was by a morning owl hawked at and killed. 
5 
