310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



goats among their hilly pastures, and associating this fact with 

 the known gaping mouth of a Caprimulgus, soon put the scandal 

 on foot that they suck the teats of the animals, and thus rob them 

 of the milk. That ancient philosopher Aristotle also believed the 

 story, and enlarged upon the legend when he wrote that the " bird 

 called cegothelas is a mountain bird, a little smaller than the 

 cuckoo. It lays two or three eggs, and is of a slothful nature ; 

 flying upon the goats, it sucks them ; they say when it has sucked 

 the teat it becomes dry, and the goat becomes blind." 



That charming naturalist White, of Selborne, did much toward 

 breaking down this kind of rank superstition, informing us, as he 

 has, that " the country people have a notion that the fern owl, or 

 churn owl, or eve jay, which they also call a pucheridge, is very 

 injurious to weanling calves, by inflicting, as it strikes at them, 

 the fatal distemper known to cow-leeches by the name of puck- 

 er idge. Thus does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double 

 imputation which it by no means deserves : in Italy, of sucking 

 the teats of goats, whence it is called the Caprimulgus, and with 

 us, of communicating a deadly disorder to the cattle. But the 

 truth of the matter is, the malady is occasioned by a dipterous 

 insect, which lays its eggs along the chines of kine, where the 

 maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of the 

 beast into the flesh, and grow to a very large size." Another 

 name for this European goatsucker {C. eurorxEus) is the "night- 

 jar," and a poj^ular writer on the natural history of the class thus 

 accounts for its origin : " The jarring sound, which gives name to 

 the bird, is uttered sometimes while flying, but usually when it is 

 at rest ; it seems to be produced in the same manner as the pur- 

 ring of a cat, and resembles it, though much louder. One of them, 

 emitting this sound while sitting on the cross of a small church, 

 communicated a sensible vibration to the whole building." (I 

 doubt that that story will find many believers among us at the 

 present day !) 



If the accounts of the habits of such gentle creatures, as re- 

 corded by men, have passed, in time, through the various stages 

 of traditional superstition, myth, and inaccuracy, to one of en- 

 lightenment, fact, and exactness, it has been none the less so with 

 the various ideas of natural historians in the matter of their opin- 

 ions as to the place occupied in the system by the Caprimidgi. 

 One chapter is quite as full of interest as the other. More intelli- 

 gent observation has cleared and is clearing away the mist that 

 enshrouded the first, while this, combined with modern methods 

 of scientific research, is rapidly rectifying the latter. Erroneous 

 classification, in other words, is being corrected through the steady 

 progress of our knowledge of the morphology or structure of the 

 class Aves. From an evolutionary point of view such changing 



