XI 



THE EIGHT OF FLIGHT 



I HAVE often touched on the way in which, in 

 natural flight, flight of bird, bat, or insect, the actual 

 direction of the curve of the stroke is masked. No 

 matter how slow the flier moves, we cannot gain by 

 eye any notion of the true trajectory of its wings. 

 There is no tracing of the path of the wing for the 

 eye to flash to the brain. Only once, whilst watching 

 gulls striving to hang stationary in a stiff breeze, 

 and very close to me, have I managed to get an 

 uncertain glimpse of the screw-like working of the 

 wings that screwing and unscrewing on the air in 

 which Pettigrew believed. But I have seen beyond 

 all doubt the actual figure of eight a figure which 

 is as the very hall-mark of natural flight. Mr. E. C. 

 Malan made me an exact sketch of this figure as 

 he and I saw it at Durley Chine on November 24, 

 1908, and the sketch lies before me as I write. The 

 bird was not of Nature, but of artifice ; but I doubt 

 not the figure is the same in both. A very stiff 

 breeze was blowing along the shore from the west at 

 the time so stiff as to raise the dry sand in curious 

 little sinuous lines and whirly puffs and drive it 

 along a foot or two above the surface of the strand. 

 My friend flew his large artificial bird a few yards 



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