220 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



Other channel of sense, the ears! From earhest childhood, the voices of the 

 night minister in each of iis to the race's instincts of superstition and awe- the 

 wind whistling in the chimney or rattling at the window, sighing and sob'bino- 

 hke some lost spirit; the weird music of the Whip-poor-Will or the Night Jar" 

 the boding cry of the owl, the demoniac laugh of the loon, have all th? power 

 to call up ghoulish forms of primitive animism in our minds, out of the long 

 dormant paganism of our past; come dawn and the sunrise, we chase them away 

 for empty phantasms with a single sweep of the eye. 



I remember, one autumn, a boy called in to ask my pupil over to his 

 father's farm ; a wild cat had been heard in the neighborhood, and he had better 

 bring his gun. The next hour or two I spent in rapt attention to story after 

 story about wild cats, lynxes and wolverines; their cunning, their daring and 

 ferocity. Late at night the huntsman returned after a fruitless chase; several 

 times he had heard the animal, but always at a distance, and nothing could be 

 seen. Night after night the cries were repeated and gradually the thing grew 

 bolder; till at last its cries were heard quite near our own cottage proceeding 

 from a little orchard; my pupil stole out with the gun, and presently we 

 heard a shot; the wild cat was dead; it was a little grey Screech Owl, one of 

 the most beautiful creatures 1 have ever seen. Its cry is a long quaverin-^- 

 whistle that comes rippling down the scale through several notes, quaintly sug- 

 gestive of a pony's whinny; like so many of the owl-cries it is curiously deep, 

 full and liquid, as though born of hollow^ wood and issuing from a vault more 

 spacious than channelled reed-pipe. 



About a mile away through field and wood lay a small lake famed afar 

 for its bass. In stormy weather gulls came up the Rideau from the St. Lawrence, 

 and on "Bass" Lake at such times we used to see a very beautiful bird from the 

 coast known locally as the Sea-swallow; much smaller than the common Gulls, 

 very graceful in flight, and with long narrow wings, perhaps the Least Tern. 



In the height of the summer as we came home late at the end of a day's 

 fishing, the groves seemed fairly alive with Whip-poor-Wills flogging the night 

 with their strange whip-lash of a cry. It is not nearly so common a sight as 

 its cousin, the Night Hawk, being more shy and seeking the seclusion of the 

 woods both for feeding and nesting. The Night Hawk lays its eggs right in 

 the open ; often, in the city, its eggs may be found on the flat roofs, over which 

 it flies hawking all the evening, or even in broad daylight when skies are grey. 

 Both birds, though utterly defenceless, if surprised on their nest, will fly in the 

 face and flutter threateningly just like the partridge. I rememiber the first time 

 I went to the village of Lanark, in a search for orchids, what crowds of Night 

 Hawks were in sight feeding over the swampy woods. Just outside the village 

 was a high rocky ridge overhanging a great swamp of spruce, cedar and tamarac. 

 After sundown at the end of my day's botany I would take up a position on 

 the top of the slope to watch these birds ; there were often two or three score 

 of them in sight at once ; they usually hunted in couples, though sometimes a 

 string of five or six would go together (perhaps all of one sex) in zig-zag 

 flight and with sharp cheeping cries; on a calm evening they seemed never to 

 tire of their favorite game of diving; sometimes one of a pair (probably the 

 male) would climb high up and then drop like a plummet past its mate in a 



