WIND AND FLIGHT 153 



wind impinging on it — I assume the bird's body 

 would be inclined slightly upward — would drive the 

 bird downward, reinforcing gravitation with fatal 

 effect. Again, it has been imagined that he is 

 somehow perpetually passing from a slowly moving 

 to a rapidly moving part of an eddy, a very precarious 

 business. Even if we grant that such a method of 

 soaring is theoretically possible, yet the stately, 

 sedate wheeling of an Eagle shows that he is depen- 

 dent on quite different conditions. He finds a strong 

 up -current at his service, and he is securely riding 

 upon it. Practical aviators, if they have not already 

 done so, will be interested to read Mr. Wilbur 

 Wright's observations on soaring birds. He has no 

 doubt as to the necessity of an up-current. He has 

 often watched Buzzards soaring ; he calculated the 

 upward incline of the wind where it was deflected 

 by a hill, the hill where he and his brother were 

 practising with their glider, and he considered the 

 question whether he might not himself with practice 

 learn to soar.* 



And now wonderful news has come from America. 

 Mr. Orville Wright has ascended on his glider, lifted 

 by an up-current, and for sixty seconds has hung, 

 almost without a quiver, in the air at a height of 

 seventy feet over a hill- top, a truly marvellous 

 achievement, worthy of a Kestrel. 



* See " Gliding Experiments of the Wright Brothers," in the 

 Aero Manual, 1910, 



