NIGHTHAWK 207 



skimmed close over a few rods, then rose and soared in 

 the air above me. Wonderful creature, which sits mo- 

 tionless on its eggs on the barest, most exposed hills, 

 through pelting storms of rain or hail, as if it were a 

 rock or a part of the earth itself, the outside of the 

 globe, with its eyes shut and its wings folded, and, after 

 the two days' storm, when you think it has become a fit 

 symbol of the rheumatism, it suddenly rises into the air 

 a bird, one of the most aerial, supple, and graceful of 

 creatures, without stiffness in its wings or joints ! It was 

 a fit prelude to meeting Prometheus bound to his rock 

 on Caucasus. 



June 17, 1853. One of the nighthawk's eggs is 

 hatched. The young is unlike any that I have seen, ex- 

 actly like a pinch of rabbit's fur or down of that color 

 dropped on the ground, not two inches long, with a 

 dimpling or geometrical or somewhat regular arrange- 

 ment of minute feathers in the middle, destined to be- 

 come the wings and tail. Yet even it half opened its eye, 

 and peeped if I mistake not. Was ever bird more com- 

 pletely protected, both by the color of its eggs and of its 

 own body that sits on them, and of the young bird just 

 hatched ? Accordingly the eggs and young are rarely 

 discovered. There was one o.g'g still, and by the side of 

 it this little pinch of down, flattened out and not ob- 

 served at first, and a foot down the hill had rolled a half 

 of the Q.g^ it came out of. There was no callowness, as 

 in the young of most birds. It seemed a singular place 

 for a bird to begin its life, — to come out of its Q^'g^ — 

 this little pinch of down, — and lie still on the exact spot 

 where the 2i^^ lay, on a flat exposed shelf on the side of 



