12 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



of the sea-bird, the quiver of the kestrel, and the 

 straight hard drive of the partridge are felt to be 

 the most perfect of all animal feats. All that is 

 athletic and all that is aesthetic in movement here 

 combine. 



The very magic of flight sometimes seems to me 

 to sit and work in the tip of the wing. In proportion 

 as the strong curved wing is lengthened and tapered 

 to a fine tip, the flier has power over the air. In 

 saying this I have not so much our wood and field 

 birds in thought as those of the sea. For magic in 

 the wing tip we should watch the soaring and sailing 

 of the gull. By granite cliffs far west of the house 

 in the woods I have watched the gulls flying across, 

 or in the teeth of, half a gale. I think there well 

 may be winds even in England against which every 

 winged thing is powerless as if unwinged, but to 

 overcome the gull entirely something like a hurricane 

 must blow. 



My eye is not educated nicely enough to detect 

 fine shades of difference in air-ease as perhaps there 

 are between our several species of familiar sea-gulls, 

 such as the saddle-back and black-headed and lesser 

 black-backed. I see, of course, that in the larger 

 birds the time between the ordinary strokes or flaps 

 is longer, the pulse of flight being with them quite 

 heron-slow ; but this is all the difference I do see 

 between, say, a lesser black-backed gull and a black- 

 headed gull in flight ; the ease in progress, commerce^ 



