FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 167 



a bird that in appearance somewhat resembles our 

 night-jar, is so called from the imaginary words 

 that it utters with maddening repetition for an hour 

 at a time. The interpretation is not much more 

 accurate than that of "cuckoo," less so, if anything, 

 for the American bird as often as not utters but 

 two syllables. When I say that its appearance 

 recalls the night-jars, I refer solely to museum 

 specimens, for to me at any rate the bird never once 

 revealed itself alive. It was a voice, a very tiring 

 voice at that ; and it repeated its request (recalling 

 the man who had a card with the words, " Please 

 kick me " pinned on his back) so often in the early 

 hours when we wanted sleep and not conversation, 

 that I vow even the President of the Society for 

 the Protection of Birds would have applied the 

 whip without a qualm. If Aristophanes had but 

 known the whip-poor-will as he knew the hoopoe 

 and the nightingale, he might have given us the 

 true meaning of its depressing refrain. 



Characteristic, however, above all other fowl 

 are the herons and egrets, if only because the 

 praiseworthy efforts of the Audubon Society and 

 other collective and individual protests from bird- 

 lovers have successfully directed the reproach of 

 public opinion against the destructive operations of 

 the plume-hunter. It was to me a pleasing, if 

 whimsical, memory that just three-quarters of a 

 century ago, in this sunny month of May, the 

 gentle Audubon was poling his little boat over the 

 lagoons and taking note of all the birds. His was 

 the golden age, the age in which Gordon Cumming 

 and Cornwallis Harris saw the veldt alive with big 

 game, and truly extermination has played the same 



