XT. MASTER IMPERTINENCE. 161 



the animal is at full gallop. And very strange attitudes 

 do the legs assume, attitudes never seen, and never to be 

 seen by the eye of men in the living animal ; for the eye 

 is not quick enough to catch them ; and therefore attitudes 

 to be sedulously shunned by the artist who knows his 

 business. When a gig is going fast the wheel-spokes 

 become a mere blur, and the artist who wishes to paint a 

 gig in motion must thus represent them. Instantaneous 

 photography, catching the spokes in a small fraction of a 

 second of time, prints them sharp and well defined. But 

 this is not how they are seen. So photography catches 

 the legs of the galloping horse, or the wings of the flying 

 pigeon, in an isolated instant of sequent time, and prints 

 them thus arrested. No eye has seen them thus, and no 

 brush with brain behind it should so represent them. 

 The artist should study these interesting and valuable 

 photographs, but not copy them. 



In the instantaneous photographs of birds in rapid 

 flight the great sweep of the wings, and the way they are 

 carried forward, with the manus or hand and its primaries 

 bent inward, at the end of the stroke come out clearly. 

 This forward and inward stroke is certainly a point of 

 great importance. Another interesting point is the turn- 

 ing of the quill-feathers of the wing during the upward 

 movement or recovery so that they cut the air. They 

 literally " feather " like the oar of an experienced rower. 

 For the down-stroke they flatten to the wing-surface, and 

 are pressed by the impact of the air each against its 

 neighbours so as to form a continuous, firmly-resisting 

 surface, from which, however, markedly in some eagles, the 

 points of the primaries project separately. 



No matter how or where you take it, habit or structure, 

 external contour or internal anatomy, the bird is brimful 

 of interest. Look, for example, at the foot with which 



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