154 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CSAJ>. 



easy pistol shot. They were evidently quite unmolested, 

 and one shuddered to think how easily two or three silly 

 cockneys, bent on mere gunning, might succeed in scaring 

 them away, and spoiling as pretty a sight as one could 

 wish to see. Hard by a cormorant sat in the lap of the 

 waves, and now and again dived for fish ; not unsuccess- 

 fully, as we had an opportunity of observing. Then 

 temporarily satiated, so far as it is possible to satiate a 

 cormorant, it painfully struggled from the water, beating 

 the air excitedly with its short narrow wings, its neck 

 stretched out in front. The contrast between the easy 

 sailing and effectual wing-strokes of the kittiwake and 

 the shag's hurried thrashing of the air was very striking. 



For there is flight and flight ; and there are wings and 

 wings. Our self-satisfied little friend the sparrow has 

 wings and the power of flight. And I've no doubt that in 

 his conceit, he imagines himself peculiarly graceful on the 

 wing. Perhaps he may even lay claim to conspicuous 

 excellence because his wing-strokes are so rapid, reaching, 

 it is said, 780 beats a minute. As if number was every- 

 thing. An author might just as well claim literary 

 excellence for his work (and, indeed, I have known them 

 do it) on the score of the numbers of copies sold in the 

 first month. The real question in either case is, Will it 

 last? Now whereas the sparrow buzzes along for fifty 

 yards or so and then, squatting on a wall, nearly bursts his 

 little bosom with boasting, yon swift has been wheeling 

 through the summer air all day loDg with scarce a pause, 

 shrilly screaming with the pure joy of life and motion, and 

 swooping down upon almost invisible insects at a rate of 

 100 miles an hour. And yet you never hear him boast, 

 any more than Shakespeare boasted of the plays he had 

 written. It is of our laboured work that we boast, not of 

 that which comes natural, as we phrase it. 



