16 WINTER SUNSHINE. 



vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, rising and fall- 

 ing as he comes up toward you, carving his way 

 through the resisting currents by a slight oscilla- 

 tion to the right and left, but never once beating the 

 air openly. 



This superabundance of wing power is very un- 

 equally distributed among the feathered races, the 

 hawks and vultures having by far the greater share 

 of it. They cannot command the most speed, but 

 their apparatus seems the most delicate and con- 

 summate. Apparently a fine play of muscle, a subtle 

 shifting of the power along the outstretched wings, a 

 perpetual loss and a perpetual recovery of the equi- 

 poise, sustains them and bears them along. With 

 them flying is a luxury, a fine art, not merely a 

 quicker and safer means of transit from one point to 

 another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that 

 that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They 

 are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to 

 that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere 

 pleasure of riding upon the air. 



And it is beneath such grace and high-bred leisure 

 that Nature hides in her creatures the occupation of 

 scavenger and carrion eater ! 



But the worst thing about the buzzard is his 

 silence. The crow caws, the hawk screams, the 

 eagle barks, but the buzzard says not a word. So 

 far as I have observed he has no vocal powers what- 

 ever. Nature dare not trust him to speak. In his 

 case she preserves a discreet silence. 



