224 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE 1790 



please your judicious eye; in which there is a tree that 

 measures 50 feet without bough or fork, and 24 feet beyond 

 the fork : there are many as tall. I speak from long obser- 

 vation when I assert, that beechen groves to a warm aspect 

 grow one-third faster than those that face to the N. and 

 N.E. and the bark is much more clean and smooth. About 

 thirty or forty years ago the oaks in this neighbourhood 

 were much admired, viz. in Hartley Wood, at Temple, and 

 Blackmoor. At the last place, the owner, a very ancient 

 Yeoman, through a blameable partiality, let his trees stand 

 till they were red -hearted and white -hearted 3 or 4 feet 

 up the stem. We have some old edible chest-nut trees in 

 this neighbourhood; but they make vile timber, being 

 always shahey and sometimes cup-shakey. 



As you seem to know the Fern-owl, or Churn-owl, or 

 Eve-jar, I shall send you, for your amusement, the following 

 account of that curious, nocturnal, migratory bird. The 

 country people here have a notion that the Fern-owl^ which 

 they also call Pucker idge, is very injurious to weanling 

 calves by inflicting, as it strikes at them, the fatal dis- 

 temper known to cow-leeches by the name of ;puckeridge. 

 Thus does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double im- 

 putation, which it by no means deserves — in Italy of sucking 

 the teats of goats, where it is called Caprimulgus, and with 

 us, of communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the 

 truth of the matter is, the malady above-mentioned is occa- 

 sioned by a dipterous insect called the oestrus hovis, which 

 lays its eggs along the backs of kine, where the maggots, 

 when hatched, eat their way through the hide of the beast 

 into its flesh, and grow to a large size. I have just talked 

 with a man who says he has been employed more than 

 once in stripping calves that had dyed of the puckeridge\ 

 that the ail, or complaint, lay along the chine, where the 

 flesh was much swelled, and filled with purulent matter. 

 Once myself I saw a large, rough maggot of this sort 



