'I'lIE POORWILL. 405 



i)t' llic l)or(lei"ing \vil(k'rno>s made- vocal in appeal to the romantic .si)iril of 

 voiitli. Poor Will! I'oor Will' you think upon cities, actions, achieveinenls; 

 think rather upon soliiuilc, ujion (|uietness, upon lonely devotions. Come, oh, 

 come to the wilderness, to the mystic, silent, fateful wastes! And ever after, 

 even tho duty call him to the city, to the stupid, stifling, roaring, (and gh^ri- 

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

 the exiled farmer boy, and he owns a reverence for the silent places, a loyalty 

 of afTection for the wilderness, which not all the forced snhservicnce of things 

 which creak or blare or sliriek may fully etTace. 



The Poor-will spends the (l;iy sleeping on the gmund uixler the shclier of 

 a sage-bush, or close beside some lichen-covered rock', to which its intricate 

 pattern of plumage marvelously assimilates. \\"hen startled, by day, the bird 

 flits a few yards over the sage-tops and plumps down at haphazard. If it 

 chances to settle in the full sunlight, it appears to be blinded and may 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 ground ui)on the slight- 

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

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

 the Xight Jars, and we know of their later movements only thru the inter- 

 mittent exercise of song. Heard in some starlit canon, tlie ])assing of a Poor- 

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

 between ])leasure and fear, — ])leasure in the delightful melancholy 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, inofYensive fay the Poor-will is, 

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

 tracery of the frost-work upon the plumage it were hopeless to describe. It is 

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

 thence gone shivering with ever lessening traces all over the upperparts. Or, 

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

 with which the bird is always wrestling, gets powdered over its garments. 

 The large bristles which line the up])er mandible, and which increase the catch- 

 ing capacity 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 

 |)rolected l)y little horny basal sheaths. With this equijmi^nt, and wings, our 

 melancholv hero easilv becomes the envv of mere human entomologists. 



