The Natural History of Selborne 433 



round its stem over the grass, as on the evening before. In 

 May these birds find the Scarabceus melohntha on the oak, 

 and the Scarabceus solstitialis at mid-summer. These peculiar 

 birds can only be watched and observed for two hours in 

 the twenty-four ; and then in dubious twilight an hour after 

 sunset and an hour before sunrise. 



On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two 

 eggs of a fern-owl or evening-jarr, which she found on the 

 verge of the Hanger, to the left of the hermitage, under a 

 beechen shrub. This person, who lives just at the foot of 

 the Hanger, seems well acquainted with these nocturnal 

 swallows, and says she has often found their eggs near that 

 place, and that they lay only two at a time on the bare 

 ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, and streaked some- 

 what in the manner of the plumage of the parent bird, and 

 were equal in size at each end. The dam was sitting on the 

 eggs when found, which contained the rudiments of young, 

 and would have been hatched perhaps in a week. From 

 hence we may see the time of their breeding, which cor- 

 responds pretty well with that of the swift, as does also the 

 period of their arrival. Each species is usually seen about 

 the beginning of May. Each breeds but once in a summer ; 

 each lays only two eggs. 



July 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owl's 

 eggs last year on July 14, on this day produced me two more, 

 one of which had been laid this morning, as appears plainly, 

 because there was only one in the nest the evening before. 

 They were found, as last July, on the verge of the down above 

 the hermitage under a beechen shrub, on the naked ground. 

 Last year those eggs were full of young, just ready to be hatched. 



These circumstances point out the exact time when these 

 curious nocturnal migratory birds lay their eggs and hatch 

 their young. Fern-owls, like snipes, stone-curlews, and some 

 other birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground 

 do not make much of nests. WHITE. 



No author that I am acquainted with has given so accurate 



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