8 WINTER SUNSHINE 



muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow for 

 instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirec- 

 tion that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter 

 day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as 

 ever, rising and falling as he comes up toward you, 

 carving his way through the resisting currents by a 

 slight oscillation to the right and left, but never 

 once beating the air openly. 



This superabundance of wing power is very un- 

 equally distributed among the feathered races, the 

 hawks and vultures having by far the greater share 

 of it. They cannot command the most speed, but 

 their apparatus seems the most delicate and consum- 

 mate. Apparently a fine play of muscle, a subtle 

 shifting of the power along the outstretched wings, 

 a perpetual loss and a perpetual recovery of the 

 equipoise, sustains them and bears them along. 

 With them flying is a luxury, a fine art, not merely 

 a quicker and safer means of transit from one point 

 to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that 

 work becomes leisure and movement rest. They 

 are not so much going somewhere, from this perch 

 to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the 

 mere pleasure of riding upon the air. 



And it is beneath such grace and high-bred^ leis- 

 ure that Nature hides in her creatures the occupation 

 of scavenger and carrion-eater! 



But the worst thing about the buzzard is his 

 silence. The crow caws, the hawk screams, the 

 eagle barks, but the buzzard says not a word. So 

 far as I have observed, he has no vocal powers what- 



