OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 321 



uncreated willow- wren, or chiff-chaf, is the next early summer 

 bird which we have remarked ; it utters two sharp piercing 

 notes, so loud in hollow woods as to occasion an echo, and is 

 usually first heard about the 20th of March. WHITE. 



This bird, which Mr. White calls the smallest willow-wren, 

 or chiff-chaf, makes its appearance very early in the spring, 

 and is very common with us ; but I cannot make out the 

 three different species of willow-wrens, which he assures us 

 he has discovered. Ever since the publication of his History 

 of Selborne, I have used my utmost endeavours to discover 

 his three birds, but hitherto without success. I have fre- 

 quently shot the bird which " haunts only the tops of trees, 

 and makes a sibilous noise," even in the very act of uttering 

 that sibilous note ; but it always proved to be the common 

 willow-wren, or his chiff-chaf. In short, I never could dis- 

 cover more than one species, unless my greater pettichaps 

 (sylvia hortensis of Latham) is his greatest willow-wren. 



MARKWICK. 



FERN-OWL, OR GTOAT-STTCKER. The country people have 

 a notion that the fern-owl, or churn-owl, or eve-jarr, which 

 they also call a puckeridge, is very injurious to weanling 

 calves, by inflicting, as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper 

 known to cow-leeches by the name of puckeridge. Thus 

 does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double impu- 

 tation, which it by no means deserves, in Italy, of sucking 

 the teats of goats, whence it is called caprimulgus ; and with 

 us, of communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the 

 truth of the matter is, the malady above mentioned is occa^ 

 sioned by the oestrus bovis, a dipterous insect, which lays its 

 eggs along the chines of kine, where the maggots, when 

 hatched, eat their way through the hide of the beast into the 

 flesh, and grow to a very large size. I have just talked with 

 a man, who says he has more than once stripped calves who 

 have died of the puckeridge ; that the ail or complaint lay 

 along the chine, where the flesh was much swelled, and filled 

 with purulent matter. Once I myself saw a large rough 

 maggot of this sort squeezed out of the back of a cow. These 

 maggots in Essex are called wornils. 



The least observation and attention would convince men 



