We have no birds of ill omen, and even the long-defamed Owl has escaped his usual reputation; not that he is regarded with favor, rather the reverse; but for other reason than attributed connexion with supernatural agents; nor is his appearance in the neighborhood of the farm-house or the settler’s cabin regarded as at all ominous, except of immediate danger to whatever of the domestic poultry may have attracted his attention, or in any degree foreboding, unless of his own abrupt demise in case he happens to be observed by the proprietor, having at hand his trusty rifle or fowling-piece. The owl takes the greater risk in such an adventure. On account, in some measure, of their peculiar forms, particularly their large heads and staring eyes, their nocturnal habits, and their habitually resorting in the day-time to secluded haunts in the forest or other little-frequented localities, no animals have been more invariably regarded as of evil portent than owls. And in this character they have found a place in the literature, and especially the poetry, of nearly all nations ancient and modern. The Latin writers seldom fail to mention the appearance of the owl among the omens and prodigies which they frequently enumerate as having preceded disasters to the state or to distinguished personages. Pliny in his Natural History, gravely devotes a chapter to Inauspicious Birds, and gives the owl a post of distinction in this manner: “The owl, a dismal bird, and very much dreaded in public auguries, inhabits deserts which are not only desolate, but dreary and inaccessible: it is a monster of night, nor does it possess any voice but a groan. Thus, when it is seen in towns or in daylight, it is an omen to be dreaded.” Book x., chapter 12. The poets give him the same reputation, but perhaps only in the legitimate exercise of their art. The poet is privileged in the entire domain of nature, and Virgil and Shakspeare have forever commemorated, though somewhat infamously, the Owl. The former alludes to it as one of numerous precursors of the death of Dido: “Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo Sæpe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.” “Whilst lonely on the roof, night’s bird prolongs The notes of woe, and shrieks funereal songs.” Shakspeare uses the Owl in the same capacity of direful portent. Thus Casca, in allusion to omens preceding the death of Cæsar: “And yesterday, the bird of night did sit Even at noon-day upon the market-place Hooting and shrieking:” and in Macbeth he introduces its cry as an accompaniment of the murder of Duncan: “Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shrieked, The fatal bellman, which giv’st the stern’st good-night. He is about it:” and again in Henry the Sixth: “The owl shriek’d at thy birth; an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time, Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempests shook down trees.”