The Bird that Whips Poor Will 



r 



of nature and fond of mysteries. There still 

 lingers among us the imported tradition of its 

 milking the cattle, which began, perhaps, among 

 the goat herds on Mt. Olympus; but that mis- 

 take is almost world-wide, existing even in the 

 heart of the Sudan. Wilson hints at quaint 

 beliefs among the farmers of his day, but, un- 

 fortunately for lovers of folk-lore, he fails to 

 recite them; an earlier naturalist of Philadel- 

 phia, Dr. Benjamin S. Barton, records, how- 

 ever, that " it is an old observation in Pennsyl- 

 vania, that when the whip-poor-will arrives it is 

 time to go barefooted." 



Down in Virginia they say that the white 

 spots on the wings of its cousin, the nighthawk, 

 are silver dollars. 



As for the bodings and dire omens so fre- 

 quently referred to in ornithological writings 

 of the sentimental sort, a somewhat extensive 

 search has shown only that in northern New 

 England (where the bird is rare) it is believed 

 that a whip-poor-will singing beneath your bed- 

 room window presages your early death. In 

 more southerly regions, where the bird comes 



o$ 183 fo 



