than ghosts when hunting rats and mice in moonlit
fields. Only one other English bird has so quiet a flight, and that is
the nightjar, another creature of the darkness, which, though no cousin
to these nocturnal birds of prey, is known in some parts of the country
as the "fern-owl." Visitors unprepared for the eerie woodland music of
these autumn nights shudder when they hear the cry of the owl, as if it
suggested midnight crime. For myself I have more agreeable associations,
since I never hear one of these birds without recalling a gallant fight
I once had with a big Tweed salmon in the weak light of a young moon,
while three owls hooted amid the ghostly ruins of Norham Castle. Yet,
even apart from this wholly agreeable memory, I find nothing unpleasant
in their music, and can readily conceive that the moping owl may sing to
his mate as passionately as Philomel.

Not only is there the popular lack of distinction between one owl and
another already referred to, but scientific ornithologists have
displayed similar want of finality in classifying these birds. There are
(as in seals) eared and earless owls, though the so-called "ears" in the
birds are not actually ears at all, but tufts of feathers that give
rather the impression of horns. There are bare-legged owls and owls with
feather stockings. There are owls that fly by day and owls that fly by
night, though this is a less satisfactory distinction than that between
the diurnal butterflies and nocturnal moths. Any reliable classification
of owls must, in short, rest on certain structural bony differences of
interest only to the student of anatomy. Nearly all these birds are able
to turn the outer toe completely round, and most of them, also, have
very keen hearing, which must be an invaluable aid when hunting small
animals in the dark.

Did the ancients actually regard the owl as a wise bird, or was the
fashion of depicting it in the following of Minerva merely dictated by
the presence of these birds on the Akropolis? It seems hardly
conceivable that they could so have blundered as to call the owls that
we know clever birds; and the alternative assumption that owlish
intellect can have appreciably changed in the interval is even less
acceptable. It is probable that too much significance need not be
attached to such association between the Greek goddess of wisdom and her
attendant owls, for Hindu symbolism represented Ganesa, god of wisdom,
with the head of an elephant