内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE HABITS OF THE BARN OWL, AND THE BENEFITS IT CONFERS ON MAN. This pretty aerial wanderer of the night often comes into my room; and after flitting to and fro, on wing so soft and silent that he is scarcely heard, he takes his departure from the same window at which he had entered. I own I have a great liking for this bird; and I have offered it hospitality and protection on account of its persecutions, and for its many services to me, ? I say services, as you will see in the sequel. I wish that any little thing I could write or say might cause it to stand better with the world at large than it has hitherto done: but I have slender hopes on this score; because old and deep-rooted prejudices are seldom overcome; and when I look back into the annals of remote antiquity, I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of mine. Ovid, nearly two thousand years ago, was extremely severe against the owl. In his Metamorphoses, he says, ? " Fcedaque fit volucris, venturi nuncia luctus, Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen." In his Fasti he openly accuses it of felony: ? " Nocte volant, puerosque petunt neutricis egentes." Lucan, too, has hit it hard: ? " Et Isetffi jurantur aves, bubone sinistro: " and the Englishman who continued the Pharsalia " Tristia raille locis Stygius dedit omina bubo. Horace tells us, that the old witch Canidia used part of the plumage of the owl in her dealings with the devil: ? " Plumamque nocturnae strigis." Virgil, in fine, joined in the hue and cry against this injured family: ? " Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Saepe queri, et longas in netum ducere voces." In our own times we find that the village maid cannot return ...