FLIGHT OF BIRDS AND INSECTS. 29 
yet to find one who will acknowledge his belief in this singular 
phenomenon. In a region of country, where snakes are so abun- 
dant as in some parts of the West, it would be very strange if 
they were not occasionally found in “ dogtowns ” as well as else- 
where. In the room in which my dogs were confined, was a cage 
containing two full-grown, living rattlesnakes. This gave me an 
excellent opportunity for testing the friendship of these animals 
for one another, but my cautious skepticism exceeded my curiosity, 
and my little friends did not, this time at least, fall victims to 
scientific experiments. 
THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS AND INSECTS. 
Tue few last numbers of the French “ Revue des Cours Scien- 
tifiques” (Nos. 36, 38, 40, 1870), which has been suspended since 
the siege of Paris, contain the reports of a course of lectures 
by M. Marey on this interesting subject. The distinguished lec- 
turer has brought to bear on this difficult theme rare experimental 
and mechanical tastes, added to a nicety of manipulation charac- 
teristic of his countrymen. 
Who of us, as remarked to the translator by an eminent orni- 
thologist, can even now explain the long sustained, peculiar flight. 
of the hawk, or turkey buzzard, as it sails in the air without 
changing the position of its wings? and, we would add, the some- 
what similar flight of a butterfly? It is the poetry of motion, and 
a marvellous exhibition of grace and ease, combined with a won- 
derful underlying strength and lightness of the parts concerned in 
flight. 
Before we give a partial account of the results obtained by the 
delicate experiments of Professor Marey, our readers should be 
reminded of the great differences between an insect and a bird, re- 
membering that the former is, in brief, a chitinous sac, so to speak, 
or rather a series of three such spherical or elliptical sacs (the 
head, thorax and abdomen) ; the outer walls of the body forming 
a solid but light crust, to which are attached broad, membranous 
wings, the wing being a sort of membranous bag stretched over a 
framework of hollow tubes, so disposed as to give the greatest 
