A GIFT OF GOD 33 



he needed was a little revolving cylinder with a sheet 

 of thin paper stretched tight and smooth upon it, and 

 blacked by the smoke of lamp or candle. The 

 cylinder was made to turn on itself at a fixed rate 

 each second of time. By a delicate forceps, he held 

 the insect so that the tips of its wings, as it whirred 

 them, just touched the smoked paper. Each touch 

 represented a wing stroke, and, counting the rows of 

 white specks on the lamp-black after the experiment, 

 he found one hundred and ninety for each second of 

 bee whir, and nearly double as many for each second 

 of whir by the house fly. If his figures sinned, they 

 sinned in understating the number of beats of the 

 insect wing to each second for the brushing of the 

 wing tip against the cylinder, light though that brush 

 might be, would, if anything, lessen the pace. 



Only one objection, I think, could be made to the 

 experiment ; it might be suggested that the whirring 

 of the insect held by the forceps did not represent full 

 strokes. But those who have gently held prisoner 

 between thumb and first finger a whirring moth will 

 not be impressed by the objection. They will feel 

 sure that, had the moth been released, it would in- 

 stantly have darted forward into space with no more 

 exertion than it was exercising as a prisoner between 

 the fingers. Small wonder, then, that when even the 

 humming-bird hawk-moth is whirring over the flowers 

 or darting from bed to bed I only see a mist of wings. 

 This moth having much longer and more powerful 



