RAPIDITY OF FLIGHT. 75 



required, to about six ; these were fetched home, every night, 

 for some weeks ; and very frequently, on seeing the house 

 from the top of the hill, they would take wing and fly home- 

 wards, making a circuit of about a mile. On one occasion 

 they were on the point of alighting on a pond of water near 

 the next farmhouse, instead of a smaller one near home ; they 

 soon, however, discovered their mistake, and raised themselves 

 in the air, to nearly as great a height as before, alighting on 

 their own water, and were there long before their driver, not- 

 withstanding that he went mostly in a direct line. These 

 flights were considered as particularly remarkable, because the 

 Geese were at the time quite fat and heavy. We have a 

 similar instance of a common tame Duck, in Hertfordshire, 

 which was in the constant habit of taking flights, with the 

 same power, and at the same height, as a Crow, or as if in its 

 wild state. The people of the village were all aware of its 

 singular propensity, asserting that it would often rise and take 

 the circuit of a mile. 



As to our smaller species, there is scarcely a part of the wide 

 ocean, in the usual route of navigators, over which some of the 

 little land-birds have not been seen flitting, blown off, in many 

 instances, possibly, from their native shores, by gales of wind, 

 and no doubt often perishing in the waters, but still leaving 

 survivors enough to give evidence of their uncommon strength 

 of wing. Thus, our well-known cheerful little bird, the Greater 

 Titmouse, has been met with in latitude 40 north and longi- 

 tude 48 west, about 920 miles from land.* But a still more 

 extraordinary instance, both as regards distance from land and 

 situation, is that of a common Meadow Pipit having alighted 

 on board a vessel from Liverpool, in latitude 47* 4' south, 

 longitude 43 19/ west, in September 1825, at a distance of at 

 least 1300 miles from the nearest mainland of South America, 

 and about 900 from the wild and barren island of Georgia. 

 The poor little traveller was taken and brought back to Liver- 

 pool, where it was seen by L>r. Traill, one of our most eminent 

 naturalists. An Owl has been also seen gliding over the 

 * Forster's North America, vol. i. 



