118 NIGHTJAK. 



trout, with a sort of quiet determination, which tells you 

 that he is 'on the feed,' makes you wish that you had a 

 rod and a landing-net in your hand; and even though you 

 have them not, you cannot help peering over the edge of 

 the bank, almost as anxiously as if you had. Well might 

 Horace sigh for the country; '0 rus quando te aspiciam.' If 

 you cannot find that happiness which beneficent Providence 

 wills you to enjoy, 'in scenes like these,' 'far,' and the farther 

 the better, 'from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,' believe 

 me you will find it nowhere. Thank God for a love of nature. 



But to return to the Nightjar, whom I have left wheeling 

 round the 'old oak tree;' from which habit, I may mention, 

 has been derived one of its provincial names. 



In flight, the tail is expanded, and the white spots are 

 very conspicuous in the male bird. Now he starts suddenly 

 upwards to a height of thirty or forty feet, and then gradually 

 descends; again he rises in a like series, and then falls as 

 suddenly as before he rose; now he glides round and round, 

 and then forwards in a straight line; now he skims along 

 the ground; and now drops with wings closed above, him. 



The food of this bird consists of moths, beetles, such as, 

 in their season, the ghost-moths and the cockchaffers, which 

 abound in the silent air on a summer's night, and any other 

 insects which it can meet with on the wing. In the pursuit 

 of these, Gilbert White says that it uses its feet, the middle 

 toe being furnished with a serrated claw, the use of which 

 is inconclusively supposed to be to grasp and hold the more 

 readily such prey, which may also be the object of the long 

 bristles, 'vibrissse,' as they are scientifically called, on the 

 bill. Linnaeus Martin thinks that White of Selborne was 

 mistaken in imagining that the bird thus conveyed its food 

 to its bill; and certainly its legs are very short for such .a 

 feat; but, on the other hand, as Bishop Stanley remarks, the 

 idea is rather borne out by its evolutions while on the prowl; 

 for, as he says, 'at twilight, it may sometimes be seen at 

 work, flitting about, hovering now over one spot, then over 

 another, occasionally dropping or tumbling over, as if shot; 

 this is the moment, when having seized a moth, the bird 

 reaches it to its mouth, and loses its balance; when again 

 rising, it glides away like a ghost, till lost in shade.' 



The general note of this species, partaking of the nature 

 of a hiss and a buzz, uttered upon the tree, but at times on 

 the wing, and prolonged for some minutesj is a mere mono- 



