u8 WILD BIRDS THROUGH THE YEAR 



tours." The wings and the fish-like body answer 

 to this description. Every thing has been sacrificed 

 to speed in the swift, and yet nothing has been 

 sacrificed for the swift, though helpless on the 

 earth, truly an unearthly creature, lives the full 

 bird life. He has an immense zest in life ; his wild 

 frolics and rowdy evening parties point to that. 



The swift is one of my wild creatures of " a fiery 

 heart." He has been denied the earth and been 

 given wholly to the air but the earth is no loss to him. 



That is the live swift. But look at the bird 

 or at what remains of it when stuffed and set up 

 in a case ! Virtually nothing does remain : the 

 fraction of the real swift in the skinned and set- 

 up swift is worthless. After watching swifts in the 

 air, it is something of a shock to see specimens in a 

 museum. It is as if our eye had cheated us, for 

 the stuffed swift looks such a miserable little bird. 

 The words " grand " and " tremendous " and 

 " glorious " seem ludicrous when used of so puny and 

 drab a thing. The wing looks next to nothing ; 

 the whole form of the bird is without special signifi- 

 cance. I felt this one day on going through the 

 natural history museum at Marseilles and looking 

 at the dead and dried swifts and Alpine swifts in 

 one of the cases. 



But the eye and imagination never really cheated 

 me over the swift. The swift is all it seems or more 

 than it seems. Only it must be alive to be real. 

 The stuffed swift wants the two things which give 

 the bird its glory Life and Speed. 



