NIGHT-RAVEN—NODDY 643 
of having its posterior margin elongated into two pairs of processes, 
while only one pair is found in the Cuprimulgine. Podargus includes 
the bird, P. cuviert, 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 Cicade and 
Phasmidz. 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 
differing among other respects in its mode of nidification, is A’gotheles, 
which belongs also to the Australian Region; and further to the 
northward, extending throughout the Malay Archipelago and into 
India, comes Fatrachostomus, wherein we again meet with species 
having “ear”-tufts somewhat like Lyncornis. The Podargine are 
thought by some to be represented in the New World by the genus 
Nyctibius, of which several species occur from the Antilles and 
Central America to Brazil. Finally, it may be stated that none of 
the Caprimulgid# 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 Neunlédter or Neunmérder, 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, sub 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 Linneeus, and the Anous stolidus 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 
1 Nodden, 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. 
