There is no bird whose manners I have studied more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), it is a wonderful and curious creature, but I have always found that though sometimes 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 an 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 Zoology."* 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 impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I assure you that, as my neighbours were assembled in an hermitage on

The Goat-sucker is a summer visitant, and about the latest, arriving in the middle of May, and departing about the end of September; and, although not numerous, it is very extensively distributed from Devonshire to the Firth of Forth. In the silent woods or lone places where tufts of furze cover the common, fringed by a belt of pines-when the ruddy streaks of the western sky have faded into a dull purple, the whirr of the goat-sucker may be heard as it sweeps over head, gliding, fluttering, shooting aside. It flies not unlike the swallow, as it pursues, like it, its insect prey with a light and wavering wing; its soft and compact plumage giving it a noiseless movement resembling that of the owls as they fit through the air. The goat-sucker is furnished with a serrated appendage to the middle claw, which it has puzzled naturalists to find a use for. The eight teeth of the claw are extremely thin, and to every use found for it objections have been raised.-ED.

the side of a steep hill, where we drink tea sometimes, 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 the little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible vibration to the whole building! This bird also sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times; and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree.

After a lapse of twenty years the author adds the following to his "History of the Fern-owl or Goatsucker:"

[The country people have a notion that the fernowl, or churn-owl, or eve-jarr, which they also call a 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 imputation which it by no means deserves in Italy, of sucking the teats of goats, whence 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 the astrus bovis, a dipterous insect, which lays its eggs along the chines of kine, where the maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of the beast into the flesh, and grow to a very large size. I have just talked with a man, who says, he has more than once stripped calves who have died of the puckeridge; that the ail or complaint lay along the chine, where the flesh was much swelled, and filled with purulent matter. I myself

once saw a large rough maggot of this sort squeezed out of the back of a cow. In Essex these maggots are called wornills.

The least observation and attention would convince men, that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the grazier, but are perfectly harmless, and subsist alone, being night birds, on night insects, such as scarabæi, and phalænæ; and through the month of July mostly on the scarabæus solstitialis, which in many districts abounds at that season. Those that we have opened, have always had their craws stuffed with large night moths and their eggs, and pieces of chaffers: nor does it any-wise appear how they can, weak and unarmed as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess the powers of animal magnetism, and can affect them by fluttering over them.

A fern-owl, this evening (August 27) showed off in a very unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round and round the circumference of my great spreading oak for twenty times following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occasionally glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree.

This

amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular phalana belonging to the oak, of which there are several sorts; and exhibited on the occasion a command of wing superior, I think, to that of the swallow itself.

When a person approaches the haunt of fern-owls in an evening, they continue flying round the head of the obtruder; and by striking their wings together above their backs, in the manner that the pigeons called smiters are known to do, make a smart snap: perhaps at that time they are jealous

for their young; and their noise and gesture are intended by way of menace.

Fern-owls seem to have an attachment to oaks, no doubt on account of food; for the next evening we saw one again several times among the boughs of the same tree; but it did not skim round its stem over the grass, as on the evening before. In May these birds find the scarabæus melolontha on the oak; and the scarabæus solstitialis at midsummer; but they can only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty-four: and then in a dubious twilight an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise.

On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two eggs of a fern-fowl or eve-jarr, which she found on the verge of the Hanger, to the left of the hermitage under a beechen shrub. This person, who lives just at the foot of the Hanger, seems well acquainted with these nocturnal swallows, and says she has often found their eggs near that place, and that they lay only two at a time on the bare ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, and streaked somewhat in the manner of the plumage of the parent bird, and were equal in size at each end. The dam was sitting on the eggs when found, which contained the rudiments of young, and would have been hatched perhaps in a week. From hence we may see the time of their breeding, which corresponds pretty well with that of the swift, as does also the period of their arrival. Each species is usually seen about the beginning of May. Each breeds but once in a summer; and each lay only two eggs.

July 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two

fern-owls' eggs last year on July 14, on this day produced me two more, one of which had been laid this morning, as appears plainly, because there was only one in the nest the evening before. They were found, as last July, on the verge of the down above the hermitage under a beechen shrub, on the naked ground. Last year those eggs were full of young, and just ready to be hatched.

These circumstances point out the exact time when these curious nocturnal migratory birds lay their eggs, and hatch their young. Fern-owls, like snipes, stone-curlews, and some other birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground do not make much of their nests.]-OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE.

It would not be at all strange if the bat, which you have procured, should prove a new one, since five species have been found in a neighbouring kingdom. The great sort that I mentioned is certainly a non-descript: I saw but one this summer, and that I had no opportunity of taking.

Your account of the Indian grass was entertaining. I am no angler myself; but inquiring of those that are, what they supposed that part of their tackle to be made of? they replied "of the intestines of a silkworm."

Though I must not pretend to great skill in entomology, yet I cannot say that I am ignorant of that kind of knowledge: I may now and then perhaps be able to furnish you with a little information.

The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with you, and since then we have had delicate weather. Mr. Barker, who has measured the