440 ON VARIOUS PARTS 



caprimulgus ; and with us, of communicating a deadly dis- 

 order to cattle. But the truth of the matter is, the malady 

 above mentioned is occasioned 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, 

 that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the grazier, 

 but are perfectly harmless, and subsist alone, being night 

 birds, on night insects, such as scarabcei, and phalcence; and 

 through the month of July mostly on the scarabceus solsti- 

 tialis, which in many districts abounds at that season. Those 

 that we have opened, have always had their craws stuffed 

 with large night moths and their eggs, and pieces of chaffers: 

 nor does it anywise appear how they can, weak and unarmed 

 as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess 

 the powers of animal magnetism, and can affect them by 

 fluttering over them. 



A fern owl, this evening (August 27) showed off in a very 

 unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round and 

 round the circumference of my great spreading oak for twenty 

 times following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occa- 

 sionally glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree. This 

 amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particu- 

 lar phalsena belonging to the oak, of which there are several 

 sorts; and exhibited on the occasion a command of wing 

 superior, I think, to that of the swallow itself. 



When a person approaches the haunt of fern owls in an 

 evening, they continue flying round the head of the obtruder; 

 and by striking their wings together above their backs, in the 

 manner that the pigeons called smiters are known to do, make 



