SEA-FOWL AND THE STORM 21 



downwards, and then, once more spreading their 

 wings, soared up forwards and seawards with the 

 impulse gained by their descent. All day long this 

 manoeuvre was repeated ; and when night fell, they 

 still held their places midway between cliff and sea. 

 The wild ducks and cormorants, which have no such 

 powers of sustained poise in flight, though the former 

 excel in what M. Marey has distinguished as the 

 vol rame-, or use of the beating wing, were in far 

 different case. The inconvenience of this limited 

 knowledge of the possible uses of the wing in creatures 

 so intelligent as wild-ducks, was very obvious, and 

 suggested the question why it is that though they 

 have apparently discovered for themselves the exact 

 distance and order of arrangement in which birds make 

 best progress when flying in company for wild-ducks 

 not only adopt the wedge-shaped formation when 

 flying together, but also preserve the distances between 

 the files with the regularity of drilled soldiers they 

 have never acquired the art of " sailing " against the 

 wind like sea-gulls, or even herons and pelicans. 



Exhausted with the constant tossing out at sea, the 

 ducks crowded to the edge of a long reef or ledge of 

 rocks, and for a time rode uneasily just outside the 

 breakers. But the rush of the tide soon drowned the 

 rocks, and turned the ledge into a white and tumbling 

 lake of foam. Then the ducks shifted once more out 

 to sea, rising uneasily, and flying from place to place, 

 like flocks of starlings. A pair or two of brent geese, 

 looking as black and heavy as cormorants against the 



