THE GOATSUCKER. 377 



proportion to the size of the organ; and the sides of 

 the mouth are armed with fringes or bristles, arranged 

 something like the baleen in the mouth of a whale, and 

 probably for a similar purpose. Those fringes, and 

 also the mouth and tongue, are covered with a viscid 

 secretion, by which the gnats and other small insects 

 which swarm on the summer evenings, may be captured 

 as birds are with limed twigs. The sound that it makes 

 while flying must agitate the air in its immediate 

 neighbourhood, and may facilitate the capture of 

 insects. The sound is also something like that of the 

 large chaffers, and as their sound is, in part at least, a 

 love one, that of the bird may decoy them to their fate, 

 and those beetles are readily captured and eaten by the 

 goatsucker. Moths, especially the hawk moths, that 

 are abroad upon their hunting expedition in the twi- 

 light, are also eagerly caught by it. Those moths 

 usually take up their abode for the day, on the under 

 sides of the leaves of trees, and of the brambles, ferns, 

 and other tall plants in brakes, and, accordingly, it 

 may be found beating about those places with great 

 assiduity. It will whirl round and round a tall tree 

 for a long time, now ascending, now descending, now 

 pouncing inward, merely to touch a particular point, 

 and now widening its circle ; and over an entangled 

 brake, it may be seen, or rather heard, for when it is not 

 projected against the sky, it is not easily seen, flying 

 across and across in zigzags, and ever and anon dip- 

 ping down to catch the prey that starts probably by the 

 sound of the bird ; and the agitation which it produces 

 in the atmosphere, may throw the prey off their guard, 

 and make the capture more easy. The stiff hairs at the 

 2 K 2 



