364 SEA-BIRDS FLOATING ON MOTIONLESS WINGS. 



flight furnishing the resistance to the air necessary to 

 carry them up: this in brief may be said to be the 

 substance of Professor Mutton's theory, which though 

 often adversely criticised, Messrs. Ashworth and Le 

 Soueff consider the most feasible explanation yet 

 advanced, and they quote the experiments lately made 

 with Mr. Hiram Maxim's " Aeroplane Flying Machine " 

 (the only machine which has ever actually risen from 

 the ground) as mainly depending on a similar prin- 

 ciple ; for it is found, they say, that " when the machine 

 is driven on to new air, the inertia of which has not 

 been disturbed, that at high speeds its lifting power 

 is much greater than it was thought to be. " * 



We have referred at some length to this matter, 

 which we regard as important, inasmuch as it is this 

 same principle which no doubt explains the appa- 

 rently motionless flight of eagles, hawks, vultures, and 

 other birds of prey, which always sail in circles, in the 

 same way that we have described as being done by 

 the albatross. 



From a sportsman's point of view, however, there is 

 another most remarkable feature about the flight of the 

 albatross, which we must by no means pass over in 

 silence. These immense birds are often 8 to i o feet across 

 the wings, f which are very long and narrow in shape, 

 while the head being carried stretched straight forwards 

 while they fly, reduces the perspective of the bird's outline 

 to the point of a cone : so that when an albatross is seen 

 flying exactly towards one, they become nearly invis- 



* Paper of Messrs. Ashworth and Le Soueff, p. 139 (Victorian 

 Naturalists' ^Ictg. for Jan. 1895). 



f It is sometimes stated in books of travel and voyages that these 

 birds are occasionally seen as much as 16 feet and even 17 feet across 

 the outstretched wings, but this is an evident exaggeration. 



