be some ground for the expression. We have
black swans now, they are no longer raræ aves,
and even white crows are, I believe, not very
uncommon freaks of nature. Pray, do birds
ever suckle their young?"

"You are not far out in your guess,"
returned Jackdaw; "the fact is, that modern
science has to a certain degree converted the
ancient joke into a solemn truth, and while
'bird's milk' was a poetic license, the restricted
form of 'pigeon's milk' which we use is a
physiological fact. The celebrated John Hunter,
experimenting upon the crop of a pigeon,
discovered that during the breeding season it takes
on a secreting function for the purpose of
supplying the young pigeons, in the callow state,
with a diet suitable to their tender condition.
An abundant secretion of a milky fluid, of an
ash-grey colour, which coagulates with acid and
forms curd, is poured put into the crop, and
mixed with the macerating grains. This curious
phenomena is recognised by Professor Owen as
the nearest approach, in the class of birds, to the
great characteristic function which has given
the name of mammalia to the highest class of
warm-blooded animals."

"Well, that is certainly very remarkable; I
could have fancied birds robbing the cows to
feed their young with their milk, but could
never have imagined they were true wet-
nurses. What bird is it they say sucks the
goats?"

"You mean the fern owl. Never was bird
more maligned than it has been for at least
three thousand years. The ordinary name is
goatsucker, the Latins call it Caprimulgus, and
the Greeks Aigothelas, all of which mean
precisely the same thing. In Italy more
particularly it is still charged with sucking goats;
and Gilbert White says that the country people
call it a puckeridge, believing it 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. The
disease is really produced by the maggots of the
gadfly. But just compare this with Aristotle's
account. The fern owl, he says, flies against
the goats, and milks them, whence its name
Ægothelas; they say (he continues), that when
the udder has been sucked it gives no more
milk, and that the goat becomes blind."

"These effects," I remarked, "may perhaps
follow the sores produced by the attacks of
gadflies, but surely there must be some ground for
the so long current opinion of its sucking
goats."

"There is just this ground and no more,"
returned my friend, "that the species are
insect feeders, and some have been observed
hunting for their prey under the bellies of
cattle and goats, perhaps seizing those very
gadflies for whose sins they are called upon to
answer for in so atrocious a manner. It is the
way of this world, if pitch is thrown some will
stick. These high crimes and misdemeanors
have stuck to the poor fern owls for some
thousands of years, and probably will to the
end of the chapter. And we are at the end of
our chapter, for here's my garden gate, and our
next thought must be of dinner."

BLACK JOHN.

A PICTURE hangs in my library: and it is
one of my most treasured and valued reliques
of old Cornwall: the full-length and
"counterfeit presentment," in oil, of a quaint and
singular dwarf. It exhibits a squat figure, uncouth
and original, just such an one as Frederick
Taylor would delight to introduce in one of his
out-of-door pieces of Elizabethan days, as an
appendage to the rural lady's state when she
rode afield with her hawk on her wrist. His
height is under four feet, hump-backed and
misshapen; his head, with tangled elfy hair
falling wildly on his shoulders, droops upon his
chest. Negro features and a dark skin
surround a loose and flabby mouth, which teeth
have long ceased to harmonise and fill out.
He is clad in a loose antique russet gaberdine,
the fashion of a past century: one hand leans
on a gnarled staff, and the other holds a wide-
brimmed felt hat, with humble gesture and
look, as though his master stood by.

The traditionary name of this well
remembered character on the Tamar-side is, Black John.
He lived from the commencement to the middle
of the eighteenth century in the household of
an honoured name, Arscott of Tetcott, an
ancestor of one of the distinguished families of
Cornwall, and as his master was well-nigh the
last of the jovial open-housed squires of the
West of England, so was Black John the last of
the jesters or makers of mirth. When the feast
was over, and the "wrath of hunger" had been
assuaged, while the hare's or fox's head, the
festive drinking-cup of silver, went round with
the nectar of the Georgian era, "strong punch
for strong heads," the jester was called in to
contribute by merry antic and jocose saying, to
the loud enjoyment of the guests. Such were
the functions sustained by my pictured and
storied dwarf, and many an anecdote still
survives around us in hearth and hall of the feats and
stories of the "Tetcott Merry-man." Two of
his usual after-dinner achievements were better
suited to the rude jollity and coarse mirth of
our forefathers than to the refinements of our
own time; although they are said to exist here
and there, among the "underground men" and
miners of Western Cornwall, even to this day.
These were "sparrow-mumbling" and
swallowing living mice, which were tethered to a string
to ensure their safe return to light and life. In
the first of these accomplishments, a sparrow,
alive, was fastened to the teeth of the artist
with a cord, and he was expected to mumble
off the feathers from the fluttering and
astonished bird, with his lips alone, until he was
plucked quite bare without the assistance or
touch of finger or hand. A couple of projecting
tusks or fangs, such as are called by the
Italians Bourbon teeth, were of singular value as