62 
THE FERN-OWL. 
were delighted with a little colony of upwards of 
fifty nests, attached in closest order beneath the 
eaves of a lone public-house, at which the coach 
stops for some minutes, between Stamford and 
Huntingdon. We do not at present recollect the 
name, hut it had an additional attraction in its sign, 
which was a head of Locke, said to he by Sir 
Thomas Lawrence, when in his earlier days a guest 
at a house in the neighbourhood. 
The Goat-suckers or Fern-Owls, so called from 
being frequently met with on heather, or wild places 
THE FERN-OWL, OR GOAT-SUCKER. 
abounding with fern, ought, more truly to be called 
Moth-Hawks, from their feeding almost entirely 
