THE WING. 85 
unites with him so perfectly that the martinet, the frigate-bird, sweeps 
along at the rate of eighty leagues an hour, five or six times swifter 
than our most rapid railway trains, outstripping the hurricane, and 
with no rival but the lightning. 
But even if our poor imitators had exactly imitated the wing, no- 
thing would have been accomplished. They, then, had copied the form, 
but not the internal structure. They thought that the bird’s power of 
ascension lay in its flight alone, forgetting the secret auxiliary which 
nature conceals in the plumage and the bones. The mystery, the 
true marvel lies in the faculty with which she endows the bird, of 
