VELOCITY OF BIRDS. 93 



credible. A hungry falcon, with his blood up and in eager pursuit 

 of his quarry, will fly at the rate of 150 miles an hour, and keep it 

 up too until his object is attained ; and the tremendous impetus of 

 the bird at such a speed accounts for the dreadful wounds that a 

 falcon inflicts when it strikes its prey, sometimes ripping up a 

 grouse, or blackcock, or mallard, from vent to breastbone, as if it 

 had been done by the keen edge of a butcher's cleaver. A goshawk 

 (Falco palumbarius) belonging to Henry of Navarre the Henri 

 Quatre of after days having its royal owner's name engraved on 

 its golden varvels, made its escape from Fontainbleau in 1574, and 

 was caught in Malta within four-and-twenty hours afterwards a 

 distance of 1400 miles, or at the rate of sixty miles an hour, sup- 

 posing him to have been on the wing the whole time. But a hawk 

 never flies by night, so that, on a fair computation, the bird's speed 

 in winging the enormous distance must have been at the rate of at 

 least 100 miles an hour. We have calculated that a snipe, thoroughly 

 alarmed, and going its best, can fly at the rate of a mile a minute, 

 and there are other well-known birds equally fleet of wing. !Nor 

 must it be supposed that the velocity of birds is a mere " flash-in- 

 the-pan," so to speak a " spurt," as it were which could not be 

 kept up. The long-sustained flights of migratory birds proves the 

 contrary that birds are not only inconceivably fleet, but, to use a 

 racing term, that they can stay as well. Of our more familiar birds, 

 we should say that the common wild duck of our meres flies with 

 greater velocity than any other bird with which the reader is likely 

 to be well acquainted. 



