. The new book of birds : an album of natural history . Birds. 2i6 THE BOOK OF BIRDS seem to have been held in much respect by the Greeks. The adjectives usually applied to it are either scornful or ill-natured. But the Athenians did go so far as to stamp the figure of this round- eyed bird on certain of their coins.' Among the Romans, its reputation was of the worst kind. If it strayed into a house, it was thought to have rr^rrr^s designs upon the baby asleep in its ENGRAVED WITH THB cradlo, Or to presago some coming mis- ATHENIASr OWL. ' 1 O O fortune to one of the household. "Any unluc
. The new book of birds : an album of natural history . Birds. 2i6 THE BOOK OF BIRDS seem to have been held in much respect by the Greeks. The adjectives usually applied to it are either scornful or ill-natured. But the Athenians did go so far as to stamp the figure of this round- eyed bird on certain of their coins.' Among the Romans, its reputation was of the worst kind. If it strayed into a house, it was thought to have rr^rrr^s designs upon the baby asleep in its ENGRAVED WITH THB cradlo, Or to presago some coming mis- ATHENIASr OWL. ' 1 O O fortune to one of the household. "Any unlucky Owl which blundered into a Roman house was nailed, alive and struggling, to the house-door, to avert the evil that it would have ; In some of the most notable disasters in Roman history, an Owl figures as the harbinger—at least so averred the story-tellers. One of these events was the death of Julius Caesar under the daggers of the assassins. Another was the fatal battle of Carrhse, when Crassus and his legions were worsted by the fleet hordes of Parthians, he himself being slain soon after. The Owl, as messenger of misfortune, figures frequently in the writings of the poets, both ancient and modern. Shakespeare mentions this bird a remarkable number of times, and mostly in connection with impending trouble. It is a pleasant change to find, in at least one old book, an account of a people who regarded the Owl in a very difierent way. In the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, that quaint gossipy traveller of the fourteenth century 1A die for making tliese coins, and showing clear and sliarp-cut the figure and face of an Owl, was found in Egypt in 1904. It probably dates from several centuries before Christ. It is now in the Museum at Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Gros
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1919
