166 COLIH CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



but using up all its powers from minute to minute, till at 

 last it runs down incontinently from sheer wearing out 

 of the unwearied vital mechanism. 



I often fancy that time to the swift must seem far 

 fuller, and therefore far longer, than it seems to us. An 

 hour must be so crammed with fresh impressions and 

 ever-varying emotions in those quickly pulsating little 

 brains, that it must lengthen out subjectively to the ap- 

 parent dimensions of a human month. Shelley once 

 finely said, in one of those luminous philosophic moments 

 which make him at times more than a mere poet in the 

 purely artistic sense, that if an infinity of thought could 

 be crowded into a minute, that minute would be eternity. 

 Now, if one reflects that the swifts which are among 

 broad English oaks to-day will be among the laden vine- 

 yards of Andalusia to-morrow, and among the palm- 

 groves and mosques of Algeria the next day not cooped 

 up by the road in narrow covered boxes, but winging 

 their way freely with their own wide pinions, and look- 

 ing down with unobstructed gaze upon all the interven- 

 ing seas and mountains as they pass one can understand 

 that perhaps to them that wild sense of exuberance and 

 richness in feeling which balloonists always tell us they 

 experience in the upper air may be the regular and habit- 

 ual experience of these little birds' aerial life. 



And not only must each moment be always full for 

 them of constantly shifting impressions ; but their ner- 

 vous organism itself must be attuned for a more hurried 

 flow of consciousness than is possible with our sluggish 

 human brain and muscles. The rapid movements of 

 wing and breast in the swift imply and necessitate a 

 rapid action of the heart, a rapid circulation of the blood, 

 a rapid inhalation and exhalation in the lungs. In a 

 given time the swift moves more, breathes more, and 



