212 
NATURE NOTES. 
In some places goatsuckers are said to be the souls of un- 
christened babies wandering around their earthly homes, which 
idea is strengthened by the fact that year after year, like the 
swallows, they return to the same neighbourhood and nightly 
frequent their old haunts. Also, as their most common name 
implies, they are credited with being able to suck the milk from 
goats turned out to pasture on the common lands. This latter 
idea is of great antiquity. Pliny writing of them says :* “ The 
caprimulgi (so called of milking goats) are like the bigger kind 
of owsels. They bee night-theeves, for all day long they see 
not. Their manner is to come into the sheepe-heards’ coats 
and goat-pens, and to the goats’ udders presently they goe 
and suck the milke at their teats. And looke what udder is so 
milked, it giveth no more milke, but misliketh and falleth away 
afterwards, and the goats become blind withall.” So we see 
that from time immemorial to our present enlightened day a 
harmless bird has been vested with unnatural powers, a fallacy 
which all our modern education and science has as yet failed to 
entirely eradicate. 
W. M. E. F. 
FOR YOUNG SELBORNIANS. 
E are sometimes asked to recommend books suitable to 
young Selbornians, books which are at once good and 
cheap, and therefore suitable for general distribution. 
Our readers will have observed that we devote con- 
siderable space to reviews of new books, to recommending good 
ones and condemning bad ones ; and we have reason to know 
that this is considered by many among the most useful functions 
of Nature Notes. The establishment of lending libraries, of 
Selbornlan literature in schools, or the introduction of this into 
existing libraries, is, we are convinced, a very important branch 
of our work, and those who wish to promote it will find ample 
material for so doing recommended in these pages. There is no 
lack of suitable literature ; the only thing we need do is to place 
it within reach of those to whom it will be beneficial. 
But besides the work of supplying libraries, there are other 
means of bringing literature into the hands of our children, and 
Mr. Stead, in his “ Books for the Bairns ” has provided us with 
two publications, which from their attractiveness and cheapness 
deserve to be distributed broadcast. They are especially suitable 
to the very young, to whom the pleasure of possessing a book of 
their own is still real and fresh. Simple in style, crammed with 
pictures, and costing only a penny each, they may be distributed 
riinie's Naturall Historic^ Part I., p. 292. 
