THE DEPARTURE OF THE SWIFTS. 167 



therefore probably feels and lives more, than any other 

 known animal. Of course the quality of its thinking 

 need not be at all high, judged by a human standard ; 

 but the quality of its vitality, the extent to which it lives 

 its life, must apparently be very high indeed. For a 

 quick flow of warm blood through the brain means on 

 the subjective side a vast total wave of consciousness, 

 sensory or emotional ; and it also probably means a very 

 rapid succession of ideas, however simple, a relatively 

 quicker perception of external objects, and a relatively 

 faster adjustment of muscular movement to the move- 

 ments of surrounding things. Anyone who watches the 

 swifts wheeling and curvetting over the water, or dart- 

 ing with unerring swoop at flies which -seem themselves 

 to dart faster than a human eye can follow, need hardly 

 doubt that to their simple little minds a second is an ap- 

 preciable interval of time, during which there is room 

 enough to form an idea, to make a muscular co-ordina- 

 tion, and to carry the desired movement out in fact. 



Nor need we even suppose that the action of the swift 

 is like the action of a cricketer catching a ball off the 

 bat, where the muscular adjustments are made with an 

 unconscious celerity and accuracy which sometimes ap- 

 pear surprising even to the actor himself ; for the crick- 

 eter is performing an exceptional and remarkable act, a 

 tour deforce of co-ordination in its own way ; whereas 

 the swift is only doing what all its race habitually do and 

 have done for countless generations. It is impossible 

 not to admit that there are real differences in the appar- 

 ent value of time to different nervous organizations. 

 The wing of a gnat beats many thousand separate beats 

 in a minute ; and each beat, though doubtless purely 

 automatic, still implies for its motor-power a distinct 

 nervous impulse. The swift is far less rapid in its 



