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. 
