The Natural History of Selborne 413 



of willow wrens which he assures us he has discovered. Ever since 

 the publication of his History of Selborne I have used my utmost 

 endeavours to discover his three birds, but hitherto without success. 

 I have frequently shot the bird which " haunts only the tops of trees, 

 and makes a sibilous noise," even in the very act of uttering that 

 sibilous note, but it always proved to be the common willow wren 

 or his chiff-chaff. In short, I never could discover more than one 

 species, unless my greater petty-chaps, Sylvia hortensis of Latham, is 

 his greatest willow wren. MARK WICK. 



FERN-OWL, OR GOAT-SUCKER. 



THE country people have a notion that the fern-owl, or churn-owl, 

 or eve-jarr, which they also call a puckeridge, is very injurious to 

 weanling calves, by inflicting as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper 

 known to cow-leeches by the name of puckeridge. Thus does this 

 harmless ill-fated bird fall under a double imputation which it by no 

 means deserves in Italy, of sucking the teats of goats, whence it is 

 called caprimulgus ; and with us, of communicating a deadly dis- 

 order to cattle. But the truth of the matter is, the malady above- 

 mentioned is occasioned by the ^Estrus bovis, a dipterous insect, 

 which lays its eggs along the chines of kine, where the maggots, 

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

 flesh, and grow to a very large size. I have just talked with a man 

 who says he has more than once stripped calves who have died of the 

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

 flesh was much swelled, and filled with purulent matter. Once I 

 myself saw a large rough maggot of this sort squeezed out of the 

 back of a cow. 



These maggots in Essex are called wornils. 



The least observation and attention would convince men that 

 these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the grazier, but are per- 

 fectly harmless, and subsist alone, being night birds, on night insects, 

 such as Scarabtei and Thal^en^e ; and through the month of July 



