A GIFT OF GOD 29 



of a hundred birds sprinkled on a little tongue of 

 sand or gravel which the outgoing tide has left 

 dry in the harbour. I have seen them look as white 

 as gulls or as the terns, swallows of the sea, two of 

 which, a month ere their season, visited the dunlins' 

 haunt at Hayling during a gale. 



I shall have something to say of the unanimity 

 and simultaneity that live in the movements of bird 

 flocks and adventures. In none do they live more 

 wondrously than in this drill of dunlins. Here is 

 a leaderless regiment which works together with a 

 precision and order that surpass all human achieve- 

 ment of the kind. 



The absolute rhythm of motion is in this dunlin 

 drill. There is no jangling note : never a wing among 

 those hundreds of wings is awry. Every wing swerves 

 in the same second, every wing cuts down or up in 

 the same second. 



Only when the slow, wavy streamer has grown to 

 an unmanageable length will the flock break for a 

 little while into two distinct parts ; but this is carried 

 out with such order and accord that the rhythm of 

 the dunlin motion does not seem affected by it. How 

 is this rhythm secured, this faultless time kept, though 

 no timekeeper is in the flock ? If the movements 

 through which the dunlins go were always the same 

 each exercise, from the moment of springing up 

 to that of settling on the ground, but a repetition of 

 the preceding movement we might understand it 



