NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 75 



are still more reasonable ; and it will be worth your pains to 

 endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why 

 they make so very short a stay. 



In your account of your error with regard to the two species of 

 herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your de- 

 scription of the heronry at Cressi Hall ; which is a curiosity I 

 never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on 

 one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have 

 a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi 

 Hall is, and near what town it lies. I have often thought that 

 those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If 

 half-a-dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water- 

 spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, they would certainly 

 find more species. 2 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more 

 than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful 

 and curious creature \ but I have always found that though some- 

 times it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it 

 utters its jarring note sitting on a bough ; and I have for many a 

 half hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, 

 and particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, 

 with its head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by 

 your draughtsman in the folio " British Zoology.' 5 3 This bird 

 is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; 

 so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or twice 

 just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can 

 hear when the weather is still It appears to me past all doubt 

 that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the 

 parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats pur. You 

 will credit me, I hope, when I assure you that, as my neighbours 

 were assembled in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where 

 we drink tea, one of these churn-owls came and settled on the 

 cross or' that little straw edifice and began to chatter, and con- 

 tinued his note for many minutes ; and we were all struck with 

 wonder to find that the organs of that little animal, when put in 

 motion, gave a sensible vibration to the whole building ! This 

 bird also sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five 



