138 THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 



had the luck to see it. Sometimes he seems to hang 

 motionless over the stern of the steamer in the 

 style with which Gulls have made us familiar. As I 

 understand the story, the Albatross in Coleridge's 

 famous poem was poised on an up-current above 

 the ship's stern, presenting a big, steady target 

 impossible to miss, when the Ancient Mariner was 

 mean enough to shoot the unsuspecting bird. Some- 

 times, I am told, the Albatross sweeps majestically 

 downward to a point some way off from the ship, 

 his wings all the while outstretched. It seems that 

 he must be practising the same kind of manoeuvre 

 that Gannets or Shearwaters practise, in their com- 

 paratively humble way, when they advance without 

 a motion of their wings at right angles to the wind, 

 or, occasionally, with the wind or against it. Accord- 

 ing to accounts, the Albatross takes downward 

 sweeps on a gigantic scale. Those who describe it 

 say that his evolutions carry him far away from the 

 vessel. How, then, are we to provide him with an 

 up-current that will lift him without his having to 

 move his giant wings ? What but the waves can 

 deflect the wind for him, when he has planed down 

 to regions beyond the steamer's sphere of influence ? 

 The Albatross is as completely subject to physical 

 laws as any other bird, or as a man of twenty stone 

 weight, and we may depend upon it that, if he is to 

 rise in the air, it must either be by means of the 

 contraction of muscles and powerful wing-strokes 

 or else by the help of an ascending current of air. 

 Those whose good fortune it is to see this noble bird 

 at his play should watch him carefully and note all 

 the conditions, instead of merely gazing, as many 



