104 THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 
These outdoor observations may be inaccurate, but 
we can hardly cavil at ti experiments in the shooting 
range.* The verdict, is, indeed, a startling one. If 
this is all they can do, birds have a reputation for 
far greater pace than is warranted by the facts. They 
are thought to be far swifter than the swiftest horse, 
but Ladas’s time over the Derby course, 14 miles, 
gives him a velocity of 324, while Spearmint in 1906 
won the Derby in 2 minutes 38°8 seconds; i.e. he 
maintained a speed of just over 34 miles per hour. 
However, a thoroughly competent observer, Com- 
mander H. Lynes, has made similar experiments 
which give decidedly different results. In his 
observations on the Migration of Birds in the Mediter- 
ranean (British Birds, Vol. 111), he writes: ‘‘ The 
only passage speeds I was able to deal with were 
those of some of the species which arrived flying 
low. The best observations were made on the 
Quails by timing them from the moment they crossed 
the fore-and-aft line of the ship to the moment that, 
with a pair of glasses, they could be seen to fly into 
a quail-net exactly 500 yards distant. The result 
gave a speed of just 50 knots per hour. Corncrakes, 
Water-Rails and Spotted Crakes arriving appeared 
to be going just about the same speed, but proper 
time-observations of them were never obtained.” 
Fifty knots is just over 57 miles, a very different 
verdict from that pronounced on Pigeons by the 
experiments in the shooting-gallery and the other 
similar experiments in the open air. And yet the 
* See Charles Lancaster’s Illustrated Treatise on the Art of Shoot- 
ing, p. 175, and Sir R. Payne-Gallwey’s Letters to Young Shooters, 
p. 152. 
