632 
NATURAL HISTORY 
the bark is much more clean and smooth/ About thirty or 
forty years ago the oaks in this neighbourhood were much 
admired, viz., in Hartley Wood, at Temple, and Blackmoor.''^ 
At the last place, the owner, a very ancient yeoman, 
through a blameable partiality, let his trees stand till they 
were red-hearted and white-hearted three or four feet up 
the stem. We have some old edible chestnut trees in this 
neighbourhood ; but they make vile timber, being always 
shakey, and sometimes cup-shakey 
As you seem to know the Fern-owl, or Churn-owl, or 
Eve -jar, I shall send you, for your amusement, the following 
account of that curious, nocturnal, migratory bird.'* The 
country people here have a notion that the Pern-owl, which 
they also call 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 puckeridge. Thus 
does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double imputa- 
tion, which it by no means deserves ; — in Italy of sucking 
the teats of goats, where it is called Caprimulgus ; and with 
us, of communicating' a deadly disorder to cattle. But the 
truth of the matter is, the malady above-mentioned is 
occasioned by a dipterous insect called the oestrus hovis, 
which lays its eggs along the backs of kine, where the 
maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of 
^ See the " Observations on Vegetables," p. 358. — Ed. 
2 " The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation 
of purveyors, and have famished much naval timber; while the trees 
on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so 
brittle as often to fall to pieces m sawing." Letter I. to Pennant, p. 4. 
—Ed. 
^ This term is explained, in the " Observations on Vegetables " 
(p. 359), to mean that the wood is " apt to separate in round pieces 
like cups." — Ed. 
This account will be found already published in the " Observations 
on Birds," under the head of " Fern-Owl, or Goatsucker" (pp. 334-335), 
and as it is in the same words, it is probably extracted from the notes 
which White had collected for a history of this bird to be published in 
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. See the 4th letter 
in the present series, p. 542. — ^Ed. 
