Flifing-Jish Flijht. 1(53 



(leal with it aiul at the sanit? tiiiio kee[) cle;ir of the [I'.tfulh 

 which will smroiiiul the ertort. 



I'rofessor IMiibius |)Ut3 the speed of the flying-fish a^ 

 ''greatly exceeding that of a ship going 10 miles an hour." 

 (leorge IJennett (' Wanderings in New {South W^ales/ vol. i. 

 p. ."»], 18^i4), much quoted, puts its extreme time in air 

 at 30 seconds " hy the walch," and its distance at 200 yards; 

 this works out at rather over 13.', miles an hour, extreme 

 rate. It will, perhaps, give a sufficiently large margin to 

 call the fish's average speed 15 miles an hour. 



Now if wind and a body, eilher or both in motion, meet at 

 a rate of 15 miles an hour directly against each other, the 

 body having 1 square loot of surface, the pressure exerted 

 thereon will be 1*107 lbs. That, I think, implies that if a 

 Hying-fish weighing a little over a pound and having a wing- 

 surface of 144 square inches (an impossibly large one, of 

 course, for such a fish) were falling through still air, it would 

 tlescend at the rate of about 15 miles an hour ; or, on the 

 other hand, if it were in a wind blowing 15 njiles an hour 

 straight upward from the sea (an impossibly favouring wind, 

 of course) it would just be supported. I will leave it entirely 

 to my readers to imagine the effect in the second case upon 

 our fish of reducing its wing-area from the suppositious 

 144 sq. inches to its actual 62 sq. inches. 



If the reader's imagination is not sufficient to drop the fish 

 into the sea at once by the reduction, then let him add the 

 effect of removing as much support as would hi taken away 

 by changing the impossible upward-blowing wind into the 

 ordinary horizontal one at the same 15 miles an hour speed, 

 meeting the wings at an acute angle. There are pitfalls 

 here, so I will avoid angles and calculations, and merely 

 point out that, however much scientists may differ as to the 

 amount of the loss of the suj)porting power involved, none 

 will dis|)ute that there will be a very great loss. 



Yet again, if these descents from favouring suppositions to 

 sober facts will not convince, I must advance one more 

 argument. It is, 1 believe, like the others, new ground, au'l 

 1 will give it a fresh paragraph. 



Flying- fish, at the end of their first flight of usually about 

 10 to 50 yards, have a habit, especially when aiii>roaching 

 the crest of a wave, of momentarily checking their wing- 

 movement antl slowing tlown trom the blurr of great rapidity 

 into a pace in which the Happing of the wing becomes easily 

 visible. This period of visibility is supposed by aeroplanists 

 to be the only portion of the flight during which the wingi 



