176 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



cricketer is performing an exceptional and remarkable 

 act, a tour de force of co-ordination in its own way ; 

 whereas the swift is only doing what all its race habitu- 

 ally do and have done for countless generations. It is 

 impossible not to admit that there are real differences in 

 the apparent value of time to different nervous organi- 

 sations. The wing of a gnat beats many thousand separ- 

 ate beats in a minute ; and each beat, though doubtless 

 purely automatic, still implies for its motor-power a 

 distinct nervous impulse. The swift is far less rapid in 

 its movements than that ; but then each movement of 

 the swift is almost certainly conscious and voluntary. 

 We can hardly doubt that if clock-hands and fly-wheels 

 were both alive, a minute would seem a much longer 

 division of time to the fly-wheel than to the clock-hand. 

 It has been well said that in acute mania the nervous 

 organism is burning itself out too fast : what is morbid 

 in the lunatic is normal and healthy in such a bird as 

 the swift 



Swifts eat on the wing, drink on the wing, and col- 

 lect materials for their nest on the wing. Hence, like 

 all other very active creatures, they produce extremely 

 small broods ; for the material used up in muscular 

 motion cannot also be devoted to genesis as well. The 

 nests are usually rude unshapely structures, under the 

 eaves of churches or among the ruins of old buildings 

 generally ; and only two eggs are usually laid by each 

 mother in a single season. It would be a curious ques- 

 tion what these haunters of old buildings did for a home 

 before the days of civilised man ; for I have never 

 known them build away from human habitations or 

 churches. Perhaps the species in its present form may 



