56 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what town it 
lies. I have often thought that those vast extents of fens have 
never been sufficiently explored. If half-a-dozen gentlemen, 
furnished with a good strength of water-spaniels, were to beat 
‘them over for a week, they would certainly find more species. 
There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied 
more than that of the goatsucker, as it is a wonderful and 
curious creature ; but I have always found that though some- 
times it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general 
it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough; and I have for 
many a half-hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible 
quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches usually on 
a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an attitude well 
expressed by your draughtsman in the folio British Zodlogy. 
This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the 
close of day; so exactly that I have known it strike up more 
than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening 
gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. It appears 
to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by organic im- 
pulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for 
sound, just as cats purr. You will credit me, I hope, when I 
assure you that, as my neighbors were assembled in an her- 
mitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of 
these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little 
straw edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note for 
many minutes; and we were all struck with wonder to find that 
the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a 
sensible vibration to the whole building! ‘This bird also some- 
times makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times. 
It would not be at all strange if your bat, which you have 
procured, should prove a new one, since five species have 
been found in the neighboring kingdom. The great sort 
that I mentioned is certainly a nondescript; I saw but one 
this summer, and that I had no opportunity of taking. 
