A GIFT OF GOD 37 



great as in the style of bird-flight. With birds, the 

 wing stroke is up-and-down vertical action; in many 

 insects the stroke more resembles a backward and 

 forward stroke, horizontal action. Thus the wings 

 of the two- winged flies are set more for the horizontal 

 than for the vertical way of striking the air ; so that 

 the figure-of-eight cut by the hovering sphinx moth 

 lies, as it were, flat on the air, whereas that of the 

 hovering hawk stands upright. But these contrasts 

 in style of wing action we know rather through 

 experiment than eyesight. There are variations and 

 contrasts much more obvious. Three butterflies 

 which are out in full summer show three widely 

 different styles in flight. The large and small skipper 

 butterflies have a darting, very impulsive way of 

 flight. A stroke carries them straight and clean 

 through the air for a yard or two, when they zigzag 

 ofl" at a tangent. The white admiral butterfly has a 

 wholly different style. Its movements on the wing 

 are serene, smooth, gliding. Here is consummate 

 grace. Third, that humble flier, the meadow-brown. 

 It tosses itself about, a single bobbing or jerking of 

 the feeble wings hardly carrying it a whole inch. 

 The meadow-brown's seems about the least effectual 

 form of butterfly flight ; and with the meadow-brown 

 we may group the small and larger heath, the ringlet, 

 and a few others ; but on a fine, still day these feeble 

 fliers will keep a-wing for hours with only short rest- 

 ing spaces. They are not so ineffectual as they look. 



