Couriers of the Air. 45 



this remarkable rate is not to be looked for in 

 any of the birds of the swallow kind. There is 

 something fascinating in the idea of eliminating 

 time and space, and with this attribute popular 

 fancy has in some measure clothed the swallows. 

 At the greater rate of speed indicated above the 

 swallow might, as has been stated, breakfast 

 round the Barbican, and take its mid-day siesta 

 in Algiers. This, however, is a popular myth. 

 In their migrations swallows stick close to land, 

 and never leave it unless compelled ; they cross 

 straits at the narrowest part, and are among the 

 most fatiguable of birds. From this it will be 

 seen that although swallows may possess con- 

 siderable speed, they have no great powers of 

 sustained flight or endurance. These attributes 

 belong, in the most marked degree, to several 

 ocean birds. 



Any one who has crossed the Atlantic must 

 have noticed that gulls accompany the ship over 

 the whole distance ; or, at least, are never absent 

 throughout the voyage. The snowy " sea swal- 

 lows," as the terns are called, seem quite tireless 

 on the wing; though the petrels and albatross 

 alone deserve the name of oceanic birds. Sir 

 Edwin Arnold, in an account of his voyage to 

 America, writes as follows of the sea-swallows: 

 " Every day we see playing round the ship and 

 skimming up and down the wave-hollows com- 

 panies of lovely little terns and sea-swallows, the 



