NIGHT-RA VEN—NODD V 643 



of having its posterior margin elongated into two pairs of processes, 

 while only one pair is found in the Caprimulginx. Podargxis includes 

 the bird, P. cuvieri, known from its cry as Morepork to Tasmanian 

 colonists, and several other species, the number of which is doubt- 

 ful, from Australia and New Guinea. They have comparatively 

 powerful bills, and, it would seem, feed to some extent on fruits and 

 berries, though they mainly subsist on insects, chiefly Cicadse and 

 Phasmidse. They also differ from the true Nightjars in having the 

 outer toes partially reversible, and they are said to build a flat nest 

 on the horizontal branch of a tree for the reception of their eggs, 

 which are of a spotless white. Apparently allied to Podargus, but 

 diff"ering among other respects in its mode of nidification, is jEgotheles, 

 which belongs also to the Australian Region ; and further to the 

 northward, extending throughout the Malay Archipelago and into 

 India, comes Batrachostomus, wherein we again meet with species 

 having "ear "-tufts somewhat like Lyncornis. The Podarginx are 

 thought by some to be represented in the New World by the genus 

 Nydibius, of which several species occur from the Antilles and 

 Central America to Brazil. Finally, it may be stated that none of 

 the Caprimulgidx seem to occur in Polynesia or in New Zealand, 

 though there is scarcely any other part of the world suited to their 

 habits in which members of the family are not found. 



NIGHT-RAVEN, a bird frequently met with in fiction, but ap- 

 parently nowhere else. 



NINE-KILLER or NINE-MURDER, old and obsolete render- 

 ings of the German Neuntodter or Neimmorder, names applied to more 

 than one species of Lanius (Shrike) and due to the belief that each 

 of the shambles of one of these birds displays the remains of nine 

 victims ("Nimmurder" by misprint, Cotgrave, 1611, suh voce 

 " Escriere "). 



NODDY, the name applied, originally by sailors, to a sea-bird 

 from its shewing so little fear of man as to be accounted stupid.^ It 

 is the Sterna stolida of Linnaeus, and the Anions stoUdus of modern 

 ornithology, having the figure of a Tern, and belonging to the sub- 

 family Sterninx, but is heavier in flight, with shorter wings and the 

 tail less deeply forked. The plumage is of a uniform sooty hue, 

 excepting the crown of the head, which is light grey. The Noddy is 

 very generally distributed throughout the tropical or nearly tropical 

 oceans, but occasionally wanders into colder climates, and has been 

 met with even in the Irish Sea. It breeds often in astounding 

 numbers, on islands, even low cays and coral-islets, commonly making 



^ Noddcn, used by Chaucer, the old form of nod, is to drop the head suddenly 

 as in falling asleep, and hence comes Sir Thomas Browne's nodipol — a sleepy 

 head, a simpleton — the modern noodle. Noddle, a jocular word for the head, is 

 possibly allied, as I am told by Prof, Skeat. 



