34 WILD BIRDS 



THE FLIGHT OF FLIGHTS 



Between natural flight and the aeroplane is fixed 

 a gulf which no imagination can truly bridge. It 

 is only in mythology a man has ever thought about 

 flying in the earliest sense of the word : Icarus did, 

 when he boasted, " In aetherias auras ego previus 

 ibo " ; but to-day we do not think of flying, we 

 only aspire to machine our way through the air as 

 we machine it through the water in a ship or over 

 the land in a train. So, no doubt, there is a great 

 deal about the methods and varying styles of birds 

 and insects and bats, and about their aerial equip- 

 ment, that is outside the sphere of the practical 

 motorist and machinist of the air. Thus, I suppose, 

 the aeroplanist need no more study a bird's feather 

 or a bird's wing-driving muscles than study the 

 scales on a butterfly's wing. Yet there are features 

 of natural flight which might repay very close study. 



As for the more obvious features of natural flight, 

 we can think and enjoy them apart from thought 

 of our own traffic with the air ; and of these 

 how the swift's flight commends itself to us spring 

 after spring ! There is something about the flight 

 of a swift that makes one try to think behind evolu- 

 tion. Change a word or two, and a saying in the 

 Koran fits well these feats of wing " Thou did'st 

 not fly when thou flewest, God flew for thee." As 

 it soars and sweeps through the air with rigid wing, 

 now and then gathering fresh impetus with a few 

 quick, scissor strokes, the swift does seem to express 



