70 



THE NATURAL HISTORY 



[LETT. 



thought that those vast fens have not 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. 



There is no bird whose manners I have studied more than that 

 of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker) : it is a wonderful and curious 

 creature, but I have always found that though sometimes 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 par- 

 ticularly 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." 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 a hermitage on the side of 

 a steep hill, where we drink tea sometimes, one of these churn- 

 owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice 

 Hnd began to chatter, and continued his note for many minutes; 

 and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs 

 of the 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 times ; and I have 

 observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing the 

 hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree. 



After a lapse of twenty years the author adds the following to 

 his " History of the Fern-owl or Goat-sucker :" 



[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 puck- 

 eridge. Thus does this harmless ill-fated bird fall under a 

 double imputation which it by no means deserves in Italy, of 



