VOICES OF THE NIGHT 



THE majority of nocturnal animals, 

 more particularly those bent on spolia- 

 tion, are strangely silent. True, frogs croak 

 in the marshes, bats shrill overhead at 

 so high a pitch that some folks cannot hear 

 them, and owls hoot from their ruins in a 

 fashion that some vote melodious and ro- 

 mantic, while others associate the sound 

 rather with midnight crime and dislike it 

 accordingly. The badger, on the other hand, 

 with the otter and fox all of them sad thieves 

 from our point of view have learnt, what- 

 ever their primeval habits, to go about their 

 marauding in stealthy silence ; and it is only in 

 less settled regions that one hears the jackals 

 barking, the hyaenas howling, and the brows- 

 ing deer whistling through the night watches. 

 There are, however, two of our native birds, 

 or rather summer visitors, since they leave us 

 in autumn, closely associated with these 

 warm June nights, the stillness of which they 

 break in very different fashion, and these are 

 the nightingale and nightjar. Each is of con- 

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