Ideal Flying-Machines 295 



of damaged pinions, the bird lies unresisting in the hand. 

 Carry him where the gladsome screams of passing comrades 

 ought, one would think, to make the heart bound to be 

 once more free, but the calm eye gives indication neither 

 of false hope nor undue mistrust. Still no unseemly 

 struggle moves the listless wings. Now lay him in the 

 dusty roadway and stand off a pace ; the wings are raised 

 perpendicularly above the back, you hear more of a shake 

 than a flutter as they descend, and with three little whirl- 

 winds of dust marking where they have brushed the surface, 

 the beau-ideal of a flying-machine is once more launched 

 into space. Gathering speed and elevation with each turn 

 of the propeller, and each turn following quicker than the 

 last on the heels of its predecessor, the aeronaut is soon 

 beyond the reach of further harm for the present, and 

 expresses his satisfaction by the vigorous shake with which 

 he gets rid of the contaminations of earth ; but yet it is 

 doubtful whether his experience to-day will suffice to keep 

 him from carelessly running the same risks of recapture 

 to-morrow ! 



When the belief first got abroad, that such birds were 

 unable to rise from a flat surface, it is not easy to trace, 

 though probably it was suggested by the shortness of the 

 legs. That it has no real foundation in fact has often 

 enough been proved, and is sufficiently demonstrated by 

 illustrations like the above, or by a consideration of the 

 places in which Swifts sometimes choose to build ; but any- 

 one handling a young bird for the first time, or an old one 

 that has become numbed with cold, may very easily be 

 deceived. Time after time I have had Swifts brought to 

 me in spring, that have been picked up, unable to fly from 

 the latter cause, and have more than once found one myself ; 

 but after a night in a warm room, or a short while before 

 a fire, they have invariably recovered, and flown off when 

 given the chance. With young birds it is different. Ex- 

 cept to creep about a little, where space admits, they never 

 leave the nest, voluntarily, until they are so well able to fly 

 as to be practically indistinguishable from their parents 

 upon the wing. They can have no " training " of any kind 



