NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL 63 
whip-poor-will’s “‘ cheering voice’ more interest- 
ing than the song of the nightingale. 
It will surprise unscientific readers to be told 
that the nearest relatives of whip-poor-wills and 
nighthawks are the swifts and the humming- 
birds. As if a chimney swift were more like a 
whip-poor-will than like a swallow! and, still 
more absurd, as if there were any close relation- 
ship between whip-poor-wills and hummingbirds! 
Put a whip-poor-will and a ruby-throated hum- 
mer side by side and they certainly do look very 
little alike —the big whip-poor-will, with its 
mottled plumage and its short, gaping beak, and 
the tiny hummingbird with its burnished feathers 
and its long needle of a bill. Evidently there 
is no great reliance to be placed upon outside 
show, or what scientific men call “ external 
characters.’ We might as well say that the 
strawberry vine and the apple-tree were own 
cousins. Yes, so we might, for the apple-tree 
and the strawberry vine are cousins —at least 
they are members of the same great and noble 
family, the family of the roses! We shall never 
get far, in science or in anything else, until we 
learn to look below the surface. 
