tiny are these that any one species could comfortably curl itself up in the divided shell of the horse-chestnut. But farmers well know that if these things are small they are no means to be despised. Now that the corn crops are cut and the hay housed, the field vole and meadow mouse are deprived of their summer shelter. Of this the barn-owl is perfectly aware, and at evening he may be seen sweeping low over the meadows seeking whom he may devour. And with what results we already know. Much unnatural history has been written of the owls, and unfortunately most people have their ideas from the poets. The barn-owl, when she has young, brings to her nest a mouse every twelve minutes, and, as she is actively employed both at evening and dawn, and both male and female hunt, forty mice a day is the lowest computation we can make. How soft is the plumage of the owl, and how noiseless her flight! Watch her as she floats past the ivy tod, down by the ricks, and silently over the old wood. Then away over the meadows, through the open door and out of the loop-hole in the barn, round the lichened tower, along the course of the brook. Presently she returns to her four downy young, with a mouse in one claw and a vole in the other, soon to be ripped up, torn, and eaten by the greedy snapping imps. The young are produced from April to December, and not unfrequently both young and eggs are found in the same nest. If you would see the mid-day _siesta_ of the owls, climb up into some hay-mow. There in an angle of the beam you will see their owlships, snoring and blinking wide their great round eyes. Their duet is the most unearthly, ridiculous, grave, like-nothing-else noise you ever heard. Here they will stay all day, digesting the mice with which they have largely gorged themselves, until twilight, when they again issue forth on their madcap revellings. This clever mouser, then, this winged cat, has a strong claim to our protection. So let not idle superstition further its destruction. The keeper's indiscretions are fewer in fur than in feather. His larder abounds in long-bodied creatures of the weasel kind. Here is the richly-coloured dark-brown fur of the pine-martin; that of the polecat, loose and light at the base but almost black at the extremity; and there are many skins of weasels, reddish brown above with the sides and under parts white. For each of these creatures he has quaint provincial names of his own. The pine-martin he calls the "sweet-mart," in contradistinction to the polecat, which is the "foumart," or "foulmart"--a name bestowed on the creature because it emits a secretion which has an abominable stench. Also, we have the stoat or ermine, which even with us is white in winter, brown in summer; but the tip of the tail is always black.