368 Stray Notes on the Birds of Angle sea. [Sess. 



armed with curious bristles, which are supposed to aid the 

 species in capturing its prey ; and in common with some other 

 birds, it possesses a quantity of sticky saliva in the glands 

 at the sides of the throat, to which smaller insects adhere in 

 such a manner as to render escape impossible. Various names 

 are applied to this species, as, for example, night-jar, churn- 

 owl, fern-owl, night-hawk, goatsucker, and many other local 

 epithets which it is unnecessary to recapitulate. The two first 

 named evidently derive their origin from the sound emitted 

 by the bird ; the fern-owl and night-hawk, from the similarity 

 of flight and appearance to the birds of prey already noted ; 

 and now it only remains to explain the meaning of goat- 

 sucker. The Latin name ccqmmvlgus literally means a goat- 

 milker, and the title originated in the following manner. 

 When skimming over the fields in search of moths, &c., it 

 very often approaches so close to the goats and cattle lying 

 there, as to have given rise to the belief among the ignorant 

 peasantry, aided no doubt by the uncertain light, that its 

 object was to avail itself of the recumbent position of the 

 animals to extract the milk from their udders, — an idea just 

 about as silly as that it fed upon game ; so what between the 

 animosity of illiterate agriculturists and irate keepers, the 

 poor bird was frequently " between the de'il and the deep 

 sea." Happily now, save among the grossly ignorant, these 

 superstitions are things of the past, and I hardly think we 

 will write " resurgam " over their ashes. 



There is yet another strange belief worth mentioning, now 

 also wellnigh discredited. From the position of its eyes, it 

 was supposed that when flying with the gape open it looked 

 through the roof of its mouth, and to enable it to do so the 

 more readily, the upper part was composed of a thin trans- 

 parent film. This idea seems erroneous, and about as credible 

 as the veracious American story of the negro, the hue of whose 

 skin was so intensely black that charcoal made a white mark 

 upon him. Some authors maintain that it flies always with 

 its mouth open ; others again that it only gapes when necessary 

 to capture the flying insect. The latter is likely to be the 

 more correct of the two theories ; but when we consider the 

 matter for a moment, both are found to be purely conjectural, 

 as how is it possible for any person to decide such a j^oint 



