VARIOUS PARTS OF NATURE 329 



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 

 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 chaffers : nor does it anywise appear how 

 they can, weak and unarmed 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 spreading 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 belong- 

 ing to the oak, of which there are several sorts ; and exhibited 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 

 their noise and gesture are intended by way of menace. 



Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account 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 scaraboeus melolontlia on the oak ; and the scarabceus sol- 

 stitialis at midsummer. These peculiar birds can only be watched 

 and observed for two hours in the twenty-four : and then in a 

 dubious twilight an hour after sun- set and an hour before sun 

 rise. 



On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two eggs of 

 a fern-owl or eve-jarr, which she found on the verge of the 



