532 NATURAL HISTORY 



the bark is much more clean and smooth. 1 About thirty or 

 forty years ago the oaks in this neighbourhood were much 

 admired, viz., in Hartley Wood, at Temple, and Blackmoor.* 

 At the last place, the owner, a very ancient yeoman, 

 through a blameable partiality, let his trees stand till they 

 were red-hearted and white-hearted three or four feet up 

 the stem. We have some old edible chestnut trees in this 

 neighbourhood ; but they make vile timber, being always 

 shakey, and sometimes cup-shakey. 3 



As you seem to know the Fern-owl, or Churn- owl, or 

 Eve-jar, I shall send you, for your amusement, the following 

 account of that curious, nocturnal, migratory bird. 4 The 

 country people here have a notion that the Fern-owl, which 

 they also call Puckeridge, is very injurious to weanling 

 calves by inflicting, as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper 

 known to cow-leeches by the name of puckeridge. Thus 

 does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double imputa- 

 tion, which it by no means deserves ; in Italy of sucking 

 the teats of goats, where it is called Caprimulgus ; and with 

 us, of communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the 

 truth of the matter is, the malady above-mentioned is 

 occasioned by a dipterous insect called the oestrus bovis, 

 which lays its eggs along the backs of kine, where the 

 maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of 



1 See the " Observations on Vegetables," p. 358. ED. 



2 " The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation 

 of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber ; while the trees 

 on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so 

 brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing." Letter I. to Pennant, p. 4. 

 ED. 



3 This term is explained, in the " Observations on Vegetables " 

 (p. 359), to mean that the wood is " apt to separate in round pieces 

 like cups." ED. 



4 This account will be found already published in the " Observations 

 on Birds," under the head of " Fern-Owl, or Goatsucker" (pp. 334-335), 

 and as it is in the same words, it is probably extracted from the notes 

 which White had collected for a history of this bird to be published in 

 the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. See the 4th letter 

 in the present series, p. 542. ED. 



