NIGHTHAWK 207 



skimmed close over a few rods, then rose and soared in 

 the air above me. Wonderful creature, which sits mo- 

 tionless on its eggs on the barest, most exposed hills, 

 through pelting storms of rain or hail, as if it were a 

 rock or a part of the earth itself, the outside of the 

 globe, with its eyes shut and its wings folded, and, after 

 the two days' storm, when you think it has become a fit 

 symbol of the rheumatism, it suddenly rises into the air 

 a bird, one of the most aerial, supple, and graceful of 

 creatures, without stiffness in its wings or joints! It was 

 a fit prelude to meeting Prometheus bound to his rock 

 on Caucasus. 



June 17, 1853. One of the nighthawk's eggs is 

 hatched. The young is unlike any that I have seen, ex- 

 actly like a pinch of rabbit's fur or down of that color 

 dropped on the ground, not two inches long, with a 

 dimpling or geometrical or somewhat regular arrange- 

 ment of minute feathers in the middle, destined to be- 

 come the wings and tail. Yet even it half opened its eye, 

 and peeped if I mistake not. Was ever bird more com- 

 pletely protected, both by the color of its eggs and of its 

 own body that sits on them, and of the young bird just 

 hatched? Accordingly the eggs and young are rarely 

 discovered. There was one egg still, and by the side of 

 it this little pinch of down, flattened out and not ob- 

 served at first, and a foot down the hill had rolled a half 

 of the egg it came out of. There was no callowness, as 

 in the young of most birds. It seemed a singular place 

 for a bird to begin its life, — to come out of its egg, — 

 this little pinch of down, — and lie still on the exact spot 

 where the egg lay, on a flat exposed shelf on the side of 



