102 
THE BIRDS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
ridge " — names, b}'-the-bye, which we seldom hear it called 
by now. But his fullest history of it was not published 
in the first edition of his work, but collected from his 
unpublished papers and added to later editions among 
the Miscellaneous Observations. 
The only dates mentioned in these observations on 
this bird are subsequent to the publication of the " History 
of Selborne " ; and, in a letter to Churton, preserved in 
Bell's edition, and dated September ist, 1789, he remarks 
that he has just found that the country people consider the 
bird injurious to weanling calves, and so forth. 
Writing to Marsham in 1790, he remarks that they have 
been less common since the long and severe winter of 1788, 
and asks : is not this a presumptive proof of their torpidity ? 
Again to the same correspondent, in December, 1 791, he 
says : " I have thought of sending a paper to the Royal 
Society, respecting the fern-owl ; and seem to think that 
I can advance some particulars concerning that peculiar, 
migratory, nocturnal bird, that have never been noticed 
before." 
In his original letter to Pennant (xxii.) he corrected his 
correspondent's extraordinary statement that the jarring 
was caused by the resistance of the air against the bird's 
mouth and throat ; but when he published the letter he 
omitted the correction, with his usual courtesy. 
In the same letter he remarks, as an instance of the 
bird's punctuality, that he has more than once known it 
to " strike up just at the report of the Portsmouth evening 
gun." 
In his comment on this letter. Bell noted that the 
night-jar was less common at Selborne than it was some 
years before ; but all ornithologists know that the summer 
migrants are as subject to considerable fluctuations in 
