sions on the defenceless poultry."
Roger or Dolly beholds him in the act of murdering a duckling, and, like
other light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they forget all the
service he has done the farm, the parish, and the state; he is shot _in
the act_, and nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on the
barn-door. Others again call him dull and shortsighted--nay, go the
length of asserting that he is stupid--as stupid as an owl. Why, our
excellent fellow, when you have the tithe of the talent of the common
owl, and know half as well how to use it, you may claim the medal.

The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. The Owl is the Nimrod of the
Night. Then, like one who shall be nameless, he sails about seeking
those whom he may devour. To do him justice, he has a truly ghost-like
head and shoulders of his own. What horror to the "small birds rejoicing
in spring's leafy bowers," fast-locked we were going to say in each
other's arms, but sitting side by side in the same cosy nuptial nest, to
be startled out of their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, beaked face
of a horrible monster with horns, picked out of feathered bed, and
wafted off in one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of hissing, and
snappish, and shapeless powder-puffs, in the loophole of a barn? In a
house where a cat is kept, mice are much to be pitied. They are so
infatuated with the smell of a respectable larder, that to leave the
premises, they confess, is impossible. Yet every hour--nay, every minute
of their lives--must they be in the fear of being leaped out upon by
four velvet paws--and devoured with kisses from a whiskered mouth, and a
throat full of that incomprehensible music--a purr. Life, on such terms,
seems to us anything but desirable. But the truth is, that mice in the
fields are not a whit better off. Owls are cats with wings. Skimming
along the grass tops, they stop in a momentary hover, let drop a talon,
and away with Mus, his wife, and small family of blind children. It is
the white, or yellow, or barn, or church, or Screech-Owl, or
Gilley-Owlet, that behaves in this way; and he makes no bones of a
mouse, uniformly swallowing him alive. Our friend, we suspect, though no
drunkard, is somewhat of a glutton. In one thing we agree with him, that
there is no sort of harm in a heavy supper. There, however, we are
guilty of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, who rise in the
morning, seems a supper, is to him who gets up at ev