MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



and though they are beautifully coloured 

 when you come to examine them in detail, 

 they so closely imitate the soil and the dry 

 heath around in general effect, that you may 

 easily pass them by, even when you have 

 marked their approximate place by disturb- 

 ing the sitting mother. Few British birds, 

 indeed, show higher and closer adaptation 

 to special conditions than our dreamy night- 

 jars, essential insect-hawkers of the dusk on 

 open and treeless uplands. Their large and 

 mysterious eyes, their gaping mouths, their 

 straining fringe of bristles, their delicate 

 owl-like plumage, their swift and silent flight, 

 their agile movements, their eerie cry, their 

 curious love-sick nature all mark them out 

 as marvellously modified nocturnal variants 

 on the general type of the swifts and 

 trogons. They are, in fact, specialized 

 descendants of the same primitive ancestral 

 form, whose bodies and souls have undergone 

 weird and beautiful changes in adaptation 

 to a wild and poetical life in the shades of 



8 



