master, came at his call, followed him in the chase, perched on his gun, and, if it found a cherry-tree in its way, would fly to it, and not return tlll it had eaten plentifully. Sometimes it would not return to its master for the whole day, but would follow him from tree to tree. The account of the relish with which this cuckoo regaled upon the cherries is curious, with reference to the old rhyme employed by nurses to teach a child its first words. "Cuckoo, and indeed few of these nursery jingles are without some foundation. But, although the cuckoo may occasionally solace its palate with cherries, insects certainly form the principal nourishment of the species, as we have before observed. And now farewell to our feathered vocal visitors THE lurking belief in the existence of supernatural agency has been apparent in every age of which we have any record. Men, whether civilized or uncivilized, seem always to have been possessed with a notion of spiritual manifestation; and this notion combined with the longing after immortality characteristic of human nature, has either taken the holy form of sound religionwithout whose aid no laws merely human could keep that strange piece of work, man, within those bounds beyond which all would become licence and confusion-or has degenerated into the "Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala-" that in some shape or other have darkened the page of history with the terrors and the cruelties-for none are more apt to be cruel than frightened people-of superstition. When once this same evil principle has taken root in the mind, its bitter fruit is soon seen in the horrors with which the most ordinary accidents and the most common things, animate and inanimate, become invested. It is not uninteresting to observe how a harmless bird or innocent quadruped, when looked at through the superstitious medium, is magnified into a being of high importance, capable, in the opinion of the soul-stricken spectator, of working weal or woe on his destinies; nor is it unamusing to trace down these fantasies in connection with the natural history of such charmed creatures,-though it by no means follows that what amuses the writer must be pleasant to the reader. There are few animals that have been more suspiciously regarded than owls. Their retired habits, the desolate places that are their favourite haunts, their hollow hootings, fearful shriekings, serpent-like hissings, and coffin-maker-like snappings, have helped to give them a bad eminence, more than overbalancing all the glory that Minerva and her own Athens could shed around them. In the sacred volume, or rather in our translations of it, we find the owl again and again associated with desolation. The thirtyfourth chapter of Isaiah, in the version now read in our churches, teems with instances: "11. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness. 13. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court of owls. 14. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. "15. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.” But there are not wanting those who do not admit any owl at all into any of these verses, except the fourteenth, where the original word rendered in our bibles "Screech Owl,” is Lilith; and this, indeed, seems to be the better opinion. In Barker's bible-"Translated according to the Hebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the best translations in divers languages: with most profitable annotations upon all the hard places, &c. &c. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the King's most excellent Maiestie, 1616," the word "owl" does not occur at all in the thirteenth verse of this chapter, where it is signified "that Idumea should be an horrible desolation and barren wildernesse. 66 "11. But the pelicane and the hedgehog shall possesse it, and the great owle and the raven shall dwell in it, and hee shall stretch out upon it the line of vanitie, and the stones of emptinesse. 13. And it shall bring foorth thornes in the palaces thereof, nettles and thistles in the strong holdes thereof, and it shall be an habitation for dragons and a court for ostriches. 14. There shall meete also Ziim and Jim, and the Satyre shall cry to his fellow, and the schrich-owle shall rest there, and shall finde for her selfe a quiet dwelling. "15. There shall the owle make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather them under her shadowe: there shall the vultures also bee gathered, every one with her mate.' In the Septuagint, no word that can be fairly translated "owl" is to be found in any of these verses. The Zurich version has Bubo in the eleventh verse only; for even the Lilith of the fourteenth is translated Lamiam the (Nacht-frau, or night-hag), and in the Vulgate we look in vain for the owl in this chapter. Demons and onocentaurs, and shrieking spirits, satyrs, and vultures, with kites and beavers, hedgehogs and pelicans, are the principal personages that haunt the dismal scene in these versions. In Scheuchzer's* plate illustrative of the verses quoted, there are no less than five owls in the fore and middle grounds; and dragons are flying about the ruins. If the saying, "You may know a man by the company he keeps," be applicable to owls, the society in which they are found in the verses and plate above noticed is not calculated to enable them to give a very good account of themselves; but bad as their reputation may be in sacred history, in profane, history it appears to be considerably worse; there, at least, no doubt can exist in the great majority of instances as to the identity of the culprits. is an Virgil introduces one of these birds among the prodigies and horrors that foreran the suicide of Dido: the whole passage admirable model of the shadowy medium through which supernatural terrors should be conveyed; and in the following lines we absolutely hear the death-song of the owl: 66 Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Sæpe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.' Again, in the twelfth book of the Æneid, one of the Dire sent Physica Sacra, 1781. down by Jupiter to conclude the scene between Æneas and Turnus takes the form of the bird, . "Quæ quondam in bustis aut culminibus desertis, Fertque refertque sonans, clypeumque everberat alis—” till all manhood melted within the Rutulian like wax. His unhappy sister Juturna no sooner hears and sees the fatal advent, than she exclaims in despair, There can be little or no doubt that Canidia's Strix was a species of this genus; nor need we be surprised that it should find a fit place among the ingredients of her infernal magazine— “Et uncta turpis ova ranæ sanguine, Plumamque nocturnæ strigis."* Pliny, indeed, says, "Esse in maledictis jam antiquis strigem convenit: sed quæ sit avium, constare non arbitror:" allowing its bad name, but not considering it certain what bird is meant. That the portions of Canidia's laboratory above noticed, were usually considered potent in a love-charm, appears from the fifth Elegy of Propertius (lib. 3). "Illum turgentis ranæ portenta rubetæ Et lecta exsectis anguibus ossa trahunt, Again, in Ovid (Metam. lib. vii.), the bird is used by wholesale to make Medea's gruel thick and slab— "Et strigis infames ipsis cum carnibus alas." Now we find these Striges just in the company where we should expect owls to be in the Thebaid of Statius, "Monstra volant, diræ strident in nube volucres, Nocturnæque gemunt striges, et feralia bubo And when we presently come nearer to our own times, we shall endeavour to show that some of these passages at least must have been present to the mind of "Rare Ben," and that he, who was a ripe scholar, accepted the Strix as a screech-owl. Indeed, the description in Ovid's Fasti (lib. vi.), presenting us with the great Hor. Epod. Lib. Ode v. head, unmoved staring eyes, beak formed for rapine, and hooked, claws, suits no bird so well as an owl. In the meantime we shall take the liberty of considering the Strix as good an owl after its kind as the Bubo itself, and follow out, with the patience of the reader, other evidence of its exceedingly wicked character. The Striges appear to have been the terror of all mothers and negligent nurses: "Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes; FASTI, LIB. VI. In the case particularly alluded to by Ovid, the nurse, alarmed by his cry, runs to the aid of the almost exhausted infant, who is restored; and the return of the Striges is prevented by charms, among which is the arbutus leaf. According to that learned physician, Serenus Samonicus, female children were also subject to their nocturnal attacks. "The little owl and the great owl" are placed under the unclean birds in our versions of the eleventh chapter of Leviticus (v. 17), though some dispute the propriety of the translation. The Seventy do not so render the words, but the Zurich edition and the Vulgate have each an owl (Bubo) in that verse. At any rate, owls had a very unclean reputation, and the transformation of the tell-tale Ascalaphus is marked by a concentration of the bad qualities of the form with which he was cursed; Fœdaque fit volucris venturi nuntia luctûs In the same spirit Queen Labe in her vengeance changed King Beder into "a vile owl," a metamorphosis still less desirable than his previous transformation into a white bird with a red bill and feet, to which incarnation the Princess Giauhara had consigned him. According to a provincial tradition, a baker's daughter was turned into an owl for refusing bread to our Saviour. Shakspere in "Hamlet," and Fletcher in "The Nice Valour," allude to the tale: which if not invented by some Gloucestershire monk, with a design on the oven, was probably of Eastern origin. The body of an owl was considered by Minerva a meet receptacle for the spirit of the polluted Nyctimene. It is not to be wondered at that such a detested bird as the Bubo should be conspicuous in Pliny's chapter De Inauspicatis avibus:* "Bubo funebris et maximè abominatus, publicis *Nat. Hist. lib. x. c. xii. |