NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 61 



those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently 

 explored. If half-a-dozen gentlemen, furnished with a 

 good strength of water-spaniels, were to beat them over 

 for a week, they would certainly find more species. 



There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 

 more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it 

 is a wonderful and curious creature ; but I have always 

 found that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I 

 know it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting 

 on a bough ; and I have for many a half-hour watched it 

 as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and particularly 

 this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its 

 head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by 

 your draughtsman in the folio " British Zoology." This 

 bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the 

 close of day ; so exactly that I have known it strike up 

 more than once or twice just at the report of the 

 Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the 

 weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt that its 

 notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the 

 parts of its windpipe formed for sound, just as cats pur. 

 You will credit me, I hope, when I assure you that, as 

 my neighbours were assembled in an hermitage on the side 

 of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of these churn-owls 

 came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice and 

 began to chatter, and continued his note for many minutes ; 

 and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs 

 of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible 

 vibration to the whole building ! This bird also sometimes 

 makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times ; and 

 I have observed that to happen when the cock has been 

 pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a 

 tree. 



