he pen of Mr Waterton.

"Of all the brave birds that e'er I did see,
The owl is the fairest in her degree,"

quoth an old ditty; and we must ourselves confess to a peculiar _penchant_
for an "owl in an ivy bush," partly from personal sympathy for its
shortsightedness, and not less for the aspect of solemn wisdom which
gained for it of yore a place on the crest of Minerva's helmet, and has
made it, in the regions of the East, the counsellor of kings and princes.
Who has not heard of the reproof thus conveyed, through the medium of a
vizier skilled in the mystic language of birds, to the devastating
ambition of Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni? The gates of whose tomb, (it may be
remarked _par parenthese_,) the _savans_ have now decided never to have
been at Somnat at all--a piece of useful knowledge cheaply acquired, no
doubt, at the expense of a war which has secured the owls of that country,
for some years to come, against any scarcity of ruined villages wherewith
to endow their daughters. We regret, therefore, to find that Mr Waterton,
to whom we owe the introduction of the Civetta in England, and who, in the
first series of his Essays, has eloquently vindicated the character of the
barn-owl against the aspersions alike of the poets of the Augustan age and
the old women of the present day, still denies the accomplishment of
hooting to the Yorkshire barn-owls, and persists in considering it
restricted to the single individual shot by Sir William Jardine. "We know
full well that most extraordinary examples of splendid talent do from time
to time make their appearance on the world's wide stage--and may we not
suppose that the barn-owl which Sir William shot in the absolute act of
hooting, may have been a gifted bird of superior parts and knowledge,
endowed, perhaps, from its early days with the faculty of hooting, or else
taught it by its neighbour the tawny owl? I beg to remark, that though I
unhesitatingly grant the faculty of hooting to this one particular
individual owl, still I flatly refuse to believe that hooting is common to
barn-owls in general." The same denial is repeated in the present volume;
but Sir William's owl is no longer alone in his glory, as the possession
of a similar talent, to at least a limited extent, has been ascribed in
the pages of the _Zoologist_ to the Oxford owls. As Mr Waterton's accuracy
as an observer cannot be questioned, we can only infer that the advantages
of education enjoyed by the ow