30 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



better. But it is not so. One movement lasts longer 

 than another : one takes the birds out to sea : another 

 keeps them inland, and so on. The number of 

 swerves, the length of the streamer of dunlins, these, 

 constantly varying, are not fixed or preconcerted. 

 There is a cause for each dunlin variation, as for 

 everything conceivable ; but this does not help us 

 who in the mass can do so little without leadership 

 and preconcert to understand how the rhythm of 

 these exercises never goes wrong. Mr. Ernest Hart, 

 the Christchurch naturalist, was taking some photo- 

 graphs for me near Hengistbury Head when he saw 

 a large gathering of the waders dunlins and ringed 

 plovers, with a few curlew-sandpipers and stints. On 

 the wing they were " turning, twisting, rising like a 

 spiral column, the glint of sunlight on their white 

 breasts," but darkening as the curves reached the 

 higher ones, and ending in apparent black. It was, 

 he told me, one of the most lovely sights of wing 

 evolution he ever witnessed. " They were reluctant to 

 leave just the spot we invaded, and, like sand-martins 

 going to roost, kept wheeling round and round all 

 the time we were there." 



For miracles of motion we need not turn to distant 

 spheres. Miracles are always near home. They lie 

 beneath the surface of seeming simplicity in the flight 

 of almost any quick-winged bee or fly. 



The insect makes progress forward or sideway 

 through the same principle that is working in a bird 



