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Birds of Quebec. 161 
and retire probably to the Arctic regions to build, though 
we are told that Audubon found a Snowbird’s nest in the 
White Mountains and Maynard certifies to the presence of 
a flock of these birds at Mount Katahdin, in Maine, early 
in August, 1869. 
The Snow Bunting, common to the continents of America 
and Kurope, occurs in vast flocks in Scotland, England, 
Russia, and even in Siberia. 
Round Quebec it comes as a regular fall and spring 
migrant: like the passenger pigeon its numbers have sadly 
decreased of late years. 
That broad-mouthed, long-winged, short-legged, dark 
bird, with white badges on its wings, is the Night Hawk, 
or Goat Sucker, Caprimulgus. You, no doubt, are aware 
why he is so persistently called Goat Sucker by naturalists ; 
it is because he never in his life sucked a goat—never 
dreamed of it. It is one of those outrageous fabrications 
invented by ignorance, to filch a poor bird of his good 
name, and which took root only because it was oft repeated. 
In the days of Olaiis Magnus, Bishop of Upsal, in Sweden, 
few dared to doubt but that Swallows, instead of going to 
Senegal and the Gold Coast to spend their Christmas and 
Easter holidays, dived before winter into the bosom of 
lakes and hybernated under the ice till spring, with no 
gayer companions than a few meditative trout or other 
fish. This was an absurd theory, but which had many 
great names to support and prop it up. The Rev. Gilbert 
White, in his History of Selborne, eloquently demonstrated 
how absurd, how impossible it was that such a thing could 
take place. 
I must not, however, forget to point out to you that 
richly-dressed individual, wearing black and orange badges ; 
that is the Baltimore Oriole. He visits chiefly the Mont- 
real district and Western Canada. Black and orange, did I 
say? Why that was the official livery of a great English 
landowner of Maryland, in the days when democracy 
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