THE POORWILL. 405 



of the bortlering wilderness made \-ocal in appeal to the romantic spirit of 

 youtli. Poor Will! Poor Will! you think upon cities, actions, achievements; 

 think rather upon solitude, upon quietness, upon lonely devotions. Come, oh, 

 come to the wilderness, to the mystic, silent, fateful wastes! And e\'er after, 

 even tho duty call him to the city, to the stupid, stifling, roaring, (and glori- 

 ous ) city, the voice of the Poor-will has wrought its work within the heart of 

 the exiled farmer l)oy, anil he owns a reverence for the silent places, a lo\'alty 

 of affection for the wilderness, which not all the forced subservience of things 

 which creak or blare or shriek may fully efiface. 



The Poor-will spends the day sleeping on the ground under the shelter (jf 

 a sage-bush, or close beside some lichen-cm-ered rock, to which its intricate 

 pattern of plumage marvelously assimilates. When startled, by day, the bird 

 tlits a few yards over the sage-tops and ])lumps down at haphazard. If it 

 chances to settle in the full sunlight, it ai)i)ears to be blinded and mav allow a 

 close approach ; but if in the shade, one is not likely to surprise it again. Even 

 after nightfall these fairy moth-catchers are much more terrestrial in their 

 habits than are the Nighthawks. They alight upon the grouml upon the slight- 

 est pretext and. indeed. a])pear most frequently to attain their object by leap- 

 mg u]5 at passing insects. They are more strictly nocturnal in habit, also, than 

 the Night Jars. ;md we know of their later movements only thru the inter- 

 mittent exercise of song. Heard in some starlit canon, the passing of a Poor- 

 will in full crv is an indescribal)le experience, producing feelings somewhere 

 between pleasure and fear, — jjleasure in the delightful melanchol}- of the notes 

 heard in the dim distance, but something akin to terror at the near approach 

 and thrilling climax of the portentous sounds. 



Taken in the hand, one sees what a quiet. in<)ffensi\'e fa\' the Poor-will is. 

 all feathers and itself a mere featherweight. The silken sheen and delicate 

 tracerv of the frost-work upon the i)lumage it were hopeless to describe. It is 

 as tho some fairy snowball had struck the bird full on the forehead, and from 

 thence gone shi\'ering with e\-er lessening traces all over the upperparts. Or, 

 perhaps, to allow another fancv, the dust of the innumerable moth-millers, 

 with which the bird is alwa\'s wrestling, gets ]iowdered over its garments. 

 The large bristles which line the upper mandi])le. and which increase the catch- 

 ing ca]3acity of the extensive gape by half, are seen to be really modified feath- 

 ers, and not hairs, as might be supposed, for in younger specimens the\' are 

 protectefl Iw little horny basal sheaths. With this equipment, and wings, our 

 melancholy hero easily becomes the envy of mere human entomologists. 



