THE NIGHT-JAR. 



pushed to a singular and almost grotesque 

 extreme, though not of course beyond the 

 limit laid 'by the needs and habits of the 

 animal. It is the enormous mouth, fringed 

 with its strange line of coarse bristles along 

 the beak, that has gained for our night-jar 

 its common European name of goatsucker. 

 And indeed, if you watch close on southern 

 upland farms, among the Apennines or the 

 Atlas, you will see the night-jars at twilight 

 hovering close by the udders of the goats 

 and cattle as they lie stretched in the 

 meadows. But they are not milking them, 

 as the Italian peasant firmly believes ; it is 

 as friends and allies that they come, not as 

 enemies. Peer hard through the gloom, on 

 a moonlit evening, and you can make 

 out at last that nocturnal flies are annoying 

 the beasts, and that as fast as they gather 

 the night-jar snaps them up, while the cattle 

 seem to recognize this friendly office by 

 never whisking their tails so long as the 

 bird attends to them. It is a mutual 



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