“Others think so too, but they are much mistaken. The cat can no more distinguish objects, if light is totally lacking, than any other creature can. It has an advantage over us, I grant you: it has large eyes, the pupils of which it can contract and almost close when it finds itself exposed to a bright light that would otherwise dazzle it, or open wide to receive more of the feeble light diffused in a dark room. These large eyes enable it to find its way in places which to us, with our poorer sight, seem pitch-dark. But in reality the darkness is not complete where a cat can manage to see well enough for its purposes. If light is totally lacking, the cat may open its eyes as wide as possible, but it will see nothing, absolutely nothing. In this particular, nocturnal birds do not differ from the cat: their large eyes, made for seeing in a dim light, can see nothing whatever when the night is perfectly dark. “Now let us follow the bird in its hunt. The night is a fine one for hunting; the air is calm, the moon shining. The hunt begins with a lugubrious war-cry. At that dreaded signal the tomtit hardly feels safe even in the deepest hollow of its tree, the redbreast trembles beneath its shelter of thick foliage, and the finch loses its head with fright. God of the weak, God of the little birds, protect them now! Make the owl, enraged as it still is from the insults of the day, miss them in its search! Blessed be Thy holy name if the rapacious bird turns in some other direction! It skirts the groves and skims over the open plain and the plowed fields. It inspects the furrows where the field-mouse crouches, the stretches of grass-land where the mole burrows, the tumble-down buildings in which rats and mice scamper to and fro. Its flight is silent, its soft wings cleaving the air without making the slightest sound to awaken its intended victims. This noiselessness of flight is due to the structure of the bird’s feathers, which are soft as silk and of finest texture. Nothing gives warning of its sudden coming: the prey is seized even before it has suspected the nearness of the enemy. The owl, on the contrary, with its exceptional acuteness of hearing, is kept informed of all that is going on in the neighborhood, its large, deep ears detecting even the rustle of a field-mouse in the grass. If the mouse begins to nibble a rootlet or a grain of wheat, the bird hears the sound of its incisors and pounces on it immediately.