1790 



THE FEEN-OWL'S FOOD 225 



I 



squeezed out of the back of a cow. An intelligent friend 

 informs me, that the disease along the chines of calves, 

 or rather the maggots that cause them, are called by the 

 graziers in Cheshire worry hrees, and a single one worry 

 tree. No doubt they mean a hreese, or breeze, the name 

 for the gad-fly, or oestrus, the parent of these maggots, which 

 lays its eggs along the backs of kine. 



But to return to the fern-owl. The least attention and 

 observation would convince men that these poor birds 

 neither injure the goat-heard, nor the grazier ; but that they 

 are perfectly harmless, and subsist alone on night-moths 

 and beetles ; and through the month of July mostly on the 

 scarabceus solstitialis, the small tree-beetle, which in many 

 districts flies and abounds at that season. Those that we 

 have opened have always had their craws stuffed with large 

 night moths and pieces of chafers: nor does it any wise 

 appear how they can, weak and unarmed as they are, inflict 

 any malady on kine, unless they possess the powers of 

 animal magnetism, and can affect them by fluttering over 

 them. Upon recollection it must have been at your house 

 that the amiable Mr. Stillingfleet kept his Calendar of Flora 

 in 1755. Similar pursuits make intimate and lasting friend- 

 ship. As I do not take in the K. S. T. I will with pleasure 

 accept of your present of a copy of your ' Indications of 

 Spring.' Hoping that your benevolence will pardon the 

 unreasonable length of this letter, on which I look back 

 with some contrition, I remain, with true esteem, 



Your most humble servant, 



Gil. White. 



Any farther correspondence will be deemed an honour. 



Marsham replied to the above letter on August 31st, 

 1790, and received an answer from Selborne dated 

 October 1 2th, but this letter is unfortunately missing. 



VOL. TI. — Q 



