WRYNECK 
167 
wide mouth, set with a row of bristles, and one 
very close observer, Mr. Edmund Selous, believes 
that it " engulfs " its food by this arrangement, 
while flying through swarms of small insects, pre- 
cisely as a whale sucks down minute sea-creatures 
by means of its similarly enormous mouth and 
fringing rows of whalebone. It has also a very 
curious claw to the middle toe, notched underneath 
like a saw, and the use of this has still to be dis- 
covered, though it is conceivable that it uses it to 
seize larger insects before transferring them to its 
mouth. Though the Nightjar is exclusively an 
insect feeder, it is still killed off by the most 
ignorant and backward of gamekeepers as a kind 
of " hawk or " owl," with neither of which 
families it has any connection whatever. The 
curious idea of its habits expressed in the name 
" Goatsucker " and the Latin generic title, is of 
course also absolutely unfounded, though it has 
been prevalent for many centuries and in many 
different lands. 
WRYNECK. 
(^lynx torquilla.') 
Cuckoo's Mate, Snake-bird, Barley-bird, Rinding- 
bird. — This curious and interesting climbing bird 
