VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
^ ^HE majority of nocturnal animals, 
JL more particularly those bent on spolia- 
tion, are strangely silent. True, frogs croak 
in the marshes, bats shrill overhead at 
so high a pitch that some folks cannot hear 
them, and owls hoot from their ruins in a 
fashion that some vote melodious and ro- 
mantic, while others associate the sound 
rather with midnight crime and dislike it 
accordingly. The badger, on the other hand, 
with the otter and fox all of them sad thieves 
from our point of view have learnt, what- 
ever their primeval habits, to go about their 
marauding in stealthy silence ; and it is only in 
less settled regions that one hears the jackals 
barking, the hyaenas howling, and the brows- 
ing deer whistling through the night watches. 
There are, however, two of our native birds, 
or rather summer visitors, since they leave us 
in autumn, closely associated with these 
warm June nights, the stillness of which they 
break in very different fashion, and these are 
the nightingale and nightjar. Each is of con- 
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