NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL 63 



whip-poor- will's " cheering voice " more interest- 

 ing than the song of the nightingale. 



It will surprise unscientific readers to be told 

 that the nearest relatives of whip-poor-wills and 

 nighthawks are the swifts and the humming- 

 birds. As if a chimney swift were more like a 

 whip-poor-will than like a swallow ! and, still 

 more absurd, as if there were any close relation- 

 ship between whip-poor-wills and hummingbirds ! 

 Put a whip-poor-will and a ruby-throated hum- 

 mer side by side and they certainly do look very 

 little alike the big whip-poor-will, with its 

 mottled plumage and its short, gaping beak, and 

 the tiny hummingbird with its burnished feathers 

 and its long needle of a bill. Evidently there 

 is no great reliance to be placed upon outside 

 show, or what scientific men call " external 

 characters." We might as well say that the 

 strawberry vine and the apple-tree were own 

 cousins. Yes, so we might, for the apple-tree 

 and the strawberry vine are cousins at least 

 they are members of the same great and noble 

 family, the family of the roses ! We shall never 

 get far, in science or in anything else, until we 

 learn to look below the surface. 



