Couriers of the Air. 53 



what seems an absolutely stationary position, as 

 though suspended by an invisible silken thread. 

 But let a meadow-mouse so much as move and 

 it drops to the sward in an instant. 



As has been already stated, there is perhaps 

 nothing more wonderful in nature than the 

 power of flight, and no subject which yields 

 such startling facts upon investigation. " The 

 way of an eagle in the air" is one of those 

 things of which Solomon expressed himself 

 ignorant ; and there is something truly marvellous 

 in the mechanism which controls the scythe-like 

 sweep of wings peculiar to most birds of prey. 

 The noblest of these, the peregrine, has been 

 seen flying over mid-Atlantic ; and Henry IV., 

 King of France, had a falcon which escaped 

 from Fontainebleau, and in twenty-four hours 

 after was found in Malta, a space computed 

 to be not less than 1,350 miles, a velocity 

 equal to fifty-six miles an hour, supposing 

 the hawk to have been on the wing the whole 

 time. Indeed, in Montagu's opinion, the 

 rapidity with which hawks and other birds 

 occasionally fly is probably not less than at the 

 rate of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, when 

 either pursued or pursuing. The speed of flight 

 of the peregrine cited above is about that of 

 our best trained pigeons; and it may here be 

 remarked that the flight of these two (otherwise 

 dissimilar) birds very much resembles each 



