The Wit of the Wild 



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ornaments distinguishing the male night-jars 

 and putting them among the curiosities of bird- 

 life. The one best known is the standard-wing 

 (Cosmetornis), where one of the outer feathers 

 in each wing is several times the length of the 

 others, and undulates behind the bird in its 

 evening flight like a ghostly streamer, for it is 

 the only white feather in the wing. Another 

 has similarly elongated quills, but these are bare 

 almost to the end, where a brown, paddle-shaped 

 vane appears, barred with black; and Schwein- 

 furth tell us that as the bird " chases the mice 

 it looks as though it had a couple of satellites 

 in attendance." The Arabs call it Father 

 Four-wings. It appears only after dark, and 

 scientific observers are so few in its country that 

 we don't know much about the bird; but Prof. 

 Alfred Newton gives in his great " Dictionary 

 of Birds " a note and picture which show it 

 roosting in the daytime on the ground with its 

 wing-quills, some twenty inches long, held per- 

 fectly upright, so that the little terminal vanes 

 tremble unnoticeable among the heads of the 

 grasses. 



