452 OBSERVATIONS ON 



These maggots in Essex are called wormils. 



The least observation and attention would convince 

 men, that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor 

 the grazier, but are perfectly harmless, and subsist 

 alone, being night birds, on night insects, such as 

 Scarabcei, and Phalcence ; and through the month of 

 July mostly on the Scarabceus solstitialis, which in many 

 districts abounds at that season. Those that we have 

 opened have always had their craws stuffed with large 

 night moths and their eggs, and pieces of chafers : nor 

 does it anywise appear how they can, weak and un- 

 armed as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless 

 they possess the powers of animal magnetism, and can 

 affect them by fluttering over them. 



A fern-owl, this evening (August 27), showed off in 

 a very unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking 

 round and round the circumference of my great spread- 

 ing oak for twenty times following, keeping mostly close 

 to the grass, but occasionally glancing up amidst the 

 boughs of the tree. This amusing bird was then in 

 pursuit of a brood of some particular Phalcena belonging 

 to the oak, of which there are several sorts ; and exhi- 

 bited on the occasion a command of wing superior, I 

 think, to that of the swallow itself. 



When a person approaches the haunt of fern-owls in 

 an evening, they continue flying round the head of the 

 obtruder; and by striking their wings together above 

 their backs, in the manner that the pigeons called 

 smiters are known to do, make a smart snap : perhaps 

 at that time they are jealous for their young ; and this 

 noise and gesture are intended by way of menace. 



Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on ac- 

 count of food ; for the next evening we saw one again 

 several times among the boughs of the same tree; but 

 it did not skim round its stem over the grass, as on the 

 evening before. In May these birds find the Scarabceus 

 Melolontha on the oak ; and the Scarabceus solstitialis at 

 midsummer. These peculiar birds can only be watched 



