The description by the Prince of Canino, as above, is as follows:—
“(Confer Capr. nuttalli, Aud. Am. Orn., 2d edit., t. 495,) ex California, Vix Turdi magnitudine. Mas. Griseus, nucha fulvescenti, abdomine cervino, nigro undulato; gula macula utrinque alba nigro terminata: remigibus fuscis, macula mediana alba, rectricibus lateralibus nigricantibus, extima late ad apicem candida.”
The characters here given differ so essentially from those of any other species of Antrostomus, that we much suspect that the bird alluded to neither belongs to this genus, nor is an American species.
4. Caprimulgus europæus. Linn.
This name occurs in several of the older authors on American Natural History, which is to be attributed to the fact that the Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) was regarded by Linnæus as a variety only of the European Goatsucker. President Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia, p. 117 (London edition, 1787), gives both of the then known North American birds of this group as two varieties only of the European bird. Professor Barton, in Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, p. 14, under the head of Caprimulgus europæus, says: “This, or a variety of it, is certainly a native of Pennsylvania. So that now all the fifteen species of this genus (mentioned by Gmelin) are known to be natives of America.” Both of these distinguished and venerated fathers of American zoological science adopted the opinion of Linnæus, and the name of the European bird is given also on the same authority by some others of the earlier American writers.
The European Goatsucker has never been observed on the continent of America.
Professor Barton’s observation above quoted is singularly suggestive. Linnæus, at the date of his last edition of the Systema Naturæ, knew two species only of the genus Caprimulgus. Gmelin, in the edition of the same work, edited by him, and published in 1788, extended the list to fifteen species, and was, when Professor Barton wrote, in 1799, recent and high authority. So greatly has the knowledge of species of birds been extended, that at this time (1855) there are at least ninety known birds of the family Caprimulgidæ, all of which would have been regarded by Linnæus and Gmelin as belonging to the genus Caprimulgus. There are seventy-four species of this family in the collection of the Philadelphia Academy. Though, as Professor Barton observes, all of those known to Gmelin (except Caprimulgus europæus), are American, others are now ascertained to inhabit all the temperate and tropical regions of both of the great divisions of the globe, and the whole of Australia.
Of this family of birds, the only species that have been ascertained or supposed by naturalists to inhabit that part of North America within our limits, are given in the preceding pages. The group is, however, represented in South America not only by other species of the genera above given, but by various other genera and species, amongst which are some curious and interesting forms. The genus Steatornis, containing a single species, first brought to notice by the celebrated Humboldt (Steatornis caripensis, Humboldt), is remarkable for its near approach to the Owls, and would, to a casual observer, scarcely be regarded as belonging to any other than that family. The genus Nyctibius, which is also South American, contains some species as large as the Crow of the United States, and which are amongst the largest birds of this group. Another genus, Hydropsalis, or the Scissors-tailed Goatsuckers, as they are termed by Azara (an enthusiastic and accurate Spanish writer on South American Natural History), are remarkable for having tails of singular forms, and of great length in some species. Hydropsalis torquatus has the two outermost feathers of its tail long, and the two middle feathers also long, leaving the intermediate comparatively short. Hydropsalis lyra, Bonaparte, has the outermost feathers of the tail very long, and curved inwards at their ends. Two species, first described by us, Hydropsalis limbatus and segmentatus (in Proc. Acad., Philadelphia), have that appendage several times the length of their bodies.
About thirty-five species of Caprimulgidæ inhabit South and Central America and Mexico. The largest birds of this group are natives of Australia.
We are inclined to the opinion that this family (and the Swallows also) properly belong to the circle of rapacious birds in which they have been arranged by Prof. Reichenbach, in Avium Systema Naturale (Dresden and Leipsic, 1850).[4]