CHAPTER V "_Sad Aziola![A] many an eventide_ _Thy music I had heard_ _By wood and stream, meadow and mountain side,_ _And fields and marshes wide,--_ _Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird_ _The soul ever stirred:_ _Unlike and far sweeter than them all._ _Sad Aziola from that moment I_ _Loved thee and thy sad cry._" SHELLEY. [A] "'Tis nothing but a little downy owl."--SHELLEY. Another bird that visits country-houses with unbounded confidence in man, if man would only recognise it, is the owl. How many people know that if they will put little barrels up in trees, or among ivy, that the barn-owls will accept the invitation and make the barrels their home, bringing to it many a hundred mice in the course of the year, and scaring away thousands more? Yet such is the case. And those who keep pigeons need not be alarmed. The owl will not touch them, and the owners, if they will take the trouble to watch, may see the owls making the dove-cot their perch and their starting-point on their sallies, their tower of observation, and the pigeons showing no uneasiness whatever at the coming and going of the cat on wings. When will the time come that gamekeepers, under pain of immediate dismissal, will be forbidden by their masters to shoot owls? As it is, this bird, which ought to be as common as the rook, is actually rare; and when it goes out to kill the mice and rats, which are the farmer's worst enemies, it has to sneak to and fro as if it was a criminal, doing something that it should not-- "a furtive owl on stealthy wing." Owls, as a matter of fact, should be tempted in every way to live amongst us, and a reward should be given to every farm-hand who brought first news of a nest upon the grounds. That they do no mischief is absolutely beyond all doubt; that they do an enormous amount of good is as absolutely on proof. Yet farmers' gamekeepers, many of whom are simply poachers promoted to private employment, grossly ignorant and brutal men, are allowed to shoot these valuable birds as if they were a pest. Poor owls! They had a bad name given them in the beginning, and, such is the persistence of popular prejudice and superstition, their bad name still clings to them among the class of rustic from which the farmers' gamekeepers are too often selected, the men who commit the very offences of egg-and-game stealing, of which they falsely accuse the owl.