326 The Bird 
powers of flight. When perched on a branch, they can 
evade the shot from a shot-gun. It is said that one will 
sometimes “chase another for three or four minutes, 
doubling, turning, twisting, and shooting, now brushing 
the grass, now rising to a height of at least two or three 
Fic. 261.—Condor about to take flight. 
hundred feet, and all the movements so rapid that the 
eye can scarcely follow them; and at the end of it would 
go back to his own chosen weed-stalk, apparently without 
a feather ruffled.” 
Any attempt to explain the mechanics of the way of a 
bird in the air would at most be imperfect in the present 
