OF SELBORNE 51 



that those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently 

 explored. If half a dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good 

 strength of water-spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, 

 they would certainly find more species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 

 more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a 

 wonderful and curious creature : but I have always found that 

 though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, 

 yet in general it utters it's jarring note sitting on a bough ; and 

 I have for many an half hour watched it as it sat with it's under 

 mandible quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches 

 usually on a bare twig, with it's head lower than it's tail, in an 

 attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio British 

 Zoology. This bird is most punctual in beginning it's song 

 exactly at the close of day ; so exactly that I have known it 

 strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the 

 Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather 

 is still. It appears to me past all doubt that it's notes are formed 

 by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of it's windpipe, 

 formed for sound, just as cats pur. 1 You will credit me, I hope, 

 when I assure you that, as my neighbours were assembled in an 

 hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of 

 these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little 

 straw edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note for 

 many minutes : and we were all struck with wonder to find that 

 the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave 

 a sensible vibration to the whole building ! This bird also 

 sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times ; 

 and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been 

 pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a 

 tree. 



It would not be at all strange if your bat, which you have 

 procured, should prove a new one, since five species have been 

 found in a neighbouring kingdom. The great sort that I men- 



1 [In the original letter, as sent to Pennant, the following passage occurs, which 

 is omitted from the book (it precedes the paragraph in the text relative to this 

 bird) : "There is a passage in the article Goatsucker, page 247 " [of the " British 

 Zoology"] "which you will pardon me for objecting to, as 1 always thought it 

 exceptionable ; and that is, ' This noise being made only in its flight, we suppose 

 it to be caused by the resistance of the air against the hollow of its vastly extended 

 mouth and throat ; for it flies with both wide open, to take its prey '. Now, as 

 the first line appears to me to be a false fact, the supposition of course falls to 

 the ground, if it should prove so." Bell.} 



