FLIGHT 85 



court disaster — they will be dried up or devoured or blown 

 away. Now there are many ways of circumventing this 

 difficulty ; there may be hard protective shells ; there may 

 be a burying of the eggs ; there may be a carrying of the 

 eggs by the parent ; there may be a secondary return to 

 the water, as in many insects ; there may be a carrying of 

 the young for a long time before birth and the bringing forth 

 of the young at a relatively advanced stage ; and there may 

 be a carrying of the young after birth as in marsupials and 

 bats. But flight opened up a new possibility — to have a 

 nest in a safe place among the branches or in the crevices 

 of the rocks. 



It is plain that the power of flight justified itself in 

 the struggle for existence in a great many different ways. 

 It gave its possessors a new safety and independence ; it 

 enabled them to follow their food and to seek for water 

 over long distances ; it enabled them to secure the well- 

 being of their offspring by building nests in well-concealed 

 places, often inaccessible except to enemies who could also 

 fly. More than that, the power of flight in its high develop- 

 ment gave birds a unique power of annihilating distance, 

 of evading the winter, of having two summers in the year, 

 of having two homes, of changing their season in a night. 

 In seeking out suitable feeding-places and breeding-places 

 neither space nor time presents to the flying bird any 

 obstacle. 



We cannot pass from flight without at least a recognition 

 of its individuality. There are many different modes, each 

 with its quality — some quiet and others bustling, some 

 apparently slow and others apparently in haste — some 

 silent and others noisy. The owl flits from tree to tree 

 without a hint of a sound, and the usefulness of this is 

 obvious. The Manx Shearwaters {Puffinus anglorwn) sleep 

 in their burrows by day, and start out on their labours at 

 dusk. In the silence of their flight they compare well 

 with owls. Dr. F. M. Ogilvie writes : " They have a 

 curiously silent flight, gliding past one in the gathering 

 gloom like ghosts indeed. I know no bird, except perhaps 



