432 'The Natural History of Se I borne 



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 mag- 

 got 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 solstitialis, 

 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 power of animal magnetism and can affect them by flutter- 

 ing 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 particular 

 phalrena 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 s miters are known to do, 

 make a smart snap ; perhaps at that time they are jealous 

 for their young, and their noise and gesture are intended by 

 way of menace. 



Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account 

 of food ; for the next evening we saw one again several times 

 among the boughs of the same tree; but it did not skim 



