they were bubbling over with vitality. When high up they 
look like so many animated bows and arrows—the arrows 
being, perhaps, somewhat short and thick. The swift, 
it is worth remembering, is a near kinsman of the humming- 
bird, which also has a long narrow wing. Both alike agree 
in this peculiarity—an upper arm-bone of excessive shortness, 
and a hand of excessive length. No other birds approach 
them in this. The only other bird which has wings quite so 
ribbon-like, when extended, is the albatross—one of our 
rarest British birds. But here the proportions of the wing 
are reversed, for the upper arm-bone is of great length, while 
the hand is relatively short. 
There is something inexpressibly soothing about the 
twilight of a summer’s evening. Most birds are abed. The 
swift can be heard high up, the “‘ woolly bats, with beady 
eyes,” are silently flitting all round one, turning and twisting 
as no bird ever turns. But for the chorus of the swifts, like 
black furies, and heard only at intervals, and faintly, all is 
silence, relieved, perchance, by the drowsy hum of a blunder- 
ing dor-beetle. Then, suddenly, if one be near some gorse, 
or bracken-covered common, the stillness is broken by a 
strange ‘‘ churring,”’ like a bubbling whistle, rising and falling 
in volume. This may be followed by a loud “clap.” And 
yet the source of these strange notes cannot be located, 
nor can any living thing be seen to which they could be 
225 
