208 



the air (as the rudder does the water) at right angles, 

 but horizontally. It likewise keeps the same situation 

 which way soever the bird turns. 



It is not therefore by the tail that most birds turn 

 to the right hand or the left, but by the wings. They 

 turn to the right by heating the air with the left wing 

 alone toward the tail : to the left, by beating it with 

 the right w:;u<. Thus Pigeons* changing their course 

 toward the left, labour with the right wing, scarce 

 stirring the other. 



Birds with long necks have another way of altering 

 their course, by only inclining their head and neck 

 this or that way. 



Birds rareiy fly up or down perpendicularly, but 

 rather in a crooked line. In ascending directly, the 

 natural and artificial tendency would counteract each 

 other. In descending directly, both would concur, 

 and endanger too precipitate a motion. 



Only the Hawk stoops directly to seize its prey: 

 whereas other birds in descending retard the motion by 

 keeping their wings expanded, and at the same time 

 stretching out their feet and legs. 



There is no flying animal but has feet as well as 

 wings, because there is no food or at least riot food 

 sufficient for them, to be had always in the air : but 

 if there were, yet such birds could take no rest ; for 

 having no feet, they could not perch upon trees, and 

 if they alighted on the ground they could not raise 

 themselves again : which birds that nave short feet can 



* It is a remarkable use which is made of pigeons in the Eastern 

 countries. They are trained up in Turky and Persia to carry ex- 

 presses ; being first used to short (lights, afterwards to longer, till 

 at lencth they will return from the farthest part of the kingdom. 

 Yea, if they are brought hood-winked twenty or thirty miles, nay, 

 sixty or a hundred, they will find their way in a very little time to 

 the place where they were bred. Every bashaw has a basket of 

 these pigeons bred at the seraglio ; one of which he dispatches, 

 thither on any emergent occasion, with letters braced under her 

 wings. This proves a more speedy method, as* well as safer, than 

 any other. For one of these birds will ca ry a letter from Babylon 

 to AU-ppo, which is thirty days journey, in forty-eight hours. 



