74 
The Queensland Naturalist August 1947 
and in Sweden “the Place of Crows and Devils.” The 
poets are almost unprintable when it conies to crows. 
Apart from all this, even in Roman days 
“TIk j cawing crow was to the State 
A sure interpreter of fate.” 
In the Earl of Northampton’s Def emotive Against 
the Poison of Supposed Prophecies (1,583) we read: “The 
flight of many crowes nppon the left side of the eampe 
made the Romans very much afrayde of some baddo luck; 
is il the great God Jupiter had nothing else to doo (said 
Carneades) but to dryve jacke daws in a floeke together” 
which is very much to the point and shows what he thought 
about it. 
It is interesting to note that the crows being on the 
left hand side was of ill-omen. In this the cults of East 
and West differ, for in India the left hand side is the 
lucky side. An interesting statement from a native com- 
mentator in Essays on Sanskrit Literature says: “Pea- 
cocks, ehatakas, chashas (blue jays) and other male birds, 
occasionally also antelopes, going cheerfully along the left’ 
give good fortune to the host.” Obviously the Traffic De- 
pailmeut discounted the Roman theory when they 
inaugurated their “Keep to the Left" rule. 
Another bird that has been misjudged from Aristotle 
down to the 18th century is the nightjar or goatsucker. It 
is the appellation “goatsucker" with which fault is found. 
The Italians started it by reporting that nightjars sucked 
the teats of goats at night, and in England it was suspected 
of inflicting calves with distemper. All this is quite 
erroneous, as the nightjar is purely insectivorous. 
In Waterloo ’s Wanderings in South America, 1812, 
he relates with what dread the natives regard the night- 
jar. Jumbo, the demon of Africa, In s them in power, and 
they are the receptacles for the departed souls who come 
back to earth unable to rest for crimes done. No native 
will let fly an arrow at one. If a. large goatsucker chance 
to cry near their huts, sorrow and grief will soon be inside 
the doer, and they await the event in terrible suspense. 
. Walerton tells how he stands in the moonlight and watches 
the goatsuckers flitting around a herd. They jump up 
every now and then and catch the nocturnal flies as they 
alight on the belly, udder and legs of the animals. In his 
quaint way, Waterton commiserates with the nightjar: 
“Poor injured little bird of night, how sadly hast thou 
suffered and how foul a stain has inattention to facts put 
