befallen me, I am not yet aware of it. The Almighty made the owls; so they have their place and province.

Attar, the Persian poet, shared all these prejudices, for in his Bird Parliament he made the owl say of itself :

"I tell you, my Delight

Is in the Ruin and the Dead of Night

Where I was born, and where I love to wone
All my life long, sitting on some cold stone
Away from all your roystering_companies,
In some dark Corner where a Treasure lies;
That, buried by some Miser in the Dark,
Speaks up to me at Midnight like a Spark
And o'er it like a Talisman I brood,

Companion of the Serpent and the Toad.”

I am very fond of the owls. I dislike to see any bird become an object of repulsion merely because its voice does not harmonize with our standard of melody. All birds cannot be larks and nightingales; but it is not their fault; and who are we, that we presume to criticize the creations of the Almighty or the workings of evolution as He has planned them?

Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London and Reading

HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, WARWICK SQ., LONDON, E.C.

Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
Emerson Hough
W. W. Jacobs

HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, WARWICK SQ., LONDON, E.C.