POTOO. 43 



again to it, even after such annoyance. It was 

 one out of many posts of a rail-fence > yet the bird 

 uniformly chose the same. Another was given me 

 a few weeks afterwards, which had been struck 

 down with a stone, as it was sitting on a tree in 

 the yard around a negro's house. It had been in 

 the habit of stationing itself there every evening, 

 and its cries, which were described to me as resem- 

 bling the mewing of a cat in pain, were so plaintive, 

 that they seem to have acted on the good woman's 

 superstition, who begged her husband to kill it. I 

 incline to think, however, that the voice here men- 

 tioned was not that of the Potoo, but of an 

 Eared Owl which may have been near it, but in 

 the darkness unobserved. This specimen lived a 

 day or two in the house, after it was knocked 

 down, and when it died it was brought to me. 

 I found its stomach, a muscular gizzard, distended 

 with large beetles, (Megasoma titanus,) disjointed. 

 That of the former contained two specimens of a 

 black PJian&us. 



Another, a male, shot in the day time, in Fe- 

 bruary, had the stomach hard stuffed with frag- 

 ments of insects, which, on being dispersed in 

 water, I found to consist wholly of beetles, among 

 which limbs of lamellicorns were conspicuous, 

 probably Phanceus. In this case the stomach was 

 more membranous; the oesophagus very wide and 

 substantial as in the Owls, but there was no dila- 

 tation or proventriculus. 



About the same time a living and uninjured spe- 

 cimen was given me, taken in a wooded morass. 



