OF NATURE. 



231 



make out the three different species of 

 willow wrens which he assures us he has 

 discovered. Ever since the publication of 

 his history of Selborne I have used my 

 utmost endeavours to discover his three 

 birds, but hitherto without success. I have 

 frequently shot the bird which haunts 

 only the tops of trees and makes a sibilous 

 noise,'^ even in the very act of uttering 

 that sibilous note, but it always proved to 

 be the common willow wren or his chifF 

 chaf. In short, I never could discovet 

 more than one species, unless my greater 

 pettychaps, sylvia hortensis of Latham, is 

 his greatest willow wren. Markwick. 



FERN-OWL, OR GOAT-SUCKER, 



The country people have a notion that 

 the fern-owl, or churn-owl, or eve-jarr,; 

 which they also call a 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 



