1885. | The Problem of the Soaring Bird. 1163 
A bird resting in a minimum breeze cannot fall to the rear 
without descending; neither can it rise vértically nor at any 
angle obliquely to the rear. It can draw forward on the air at 
any speed, and when the minimum is exceeded, can then fall to 
the rear, or rise until the minimum is once more reached. At 
the minimum velocity the bird’s wings are stretched to their ex- 
treme limit and the angle of inclination is the greatest. As the 
breeze stiffens, the bird, if it remains in the same place, flexes its 
pinions and reduces its incline. The frigate bird will float ina 
storm with not more than one-quarter of its wing surfaces ex- 
posed. Sometimes it bends the points of its wings downwards 
until they meet underneath. 
The positions of the stretched wings in regard to a level with 
the body of the bird also varies. Those of the frigate bird will 
average level, the buzzards will be above and the gannets below 
a level. , 
For at least three hundred days in the year these birds could 
be observed in the air, and when the attention was given to their 
actions for a considerable time, at all seasons, and in the various 
situations found on so varied a coast as that between Tampa bay 
and the Capes of Florida, not only the habitual methods common 
to ordinary soaring flight, but the unusual ones, incidentally per- 
formed to meet some emergency, were witnessed. The birds also 
have periodic seasons of feeling which puts them on behavior 
that in a man would be thought idiotic. The months of Febru- 
ary and March, the time of breeding, are prolific in these singu- 
lar air-tumbling performances. They served to emphasize the 
complete difference between active and fixed wing flight. 
Being informed by parties from Charlotte’s harbor that sand- 
hill cranes could be found there, I sat out in search of them. An 
outside passage of thirty miles was required, which was safely 
made, and at nightfall I was among the Gasparilla keys. The 
wind being favorable and the weather fair, 1 kept on the outer 
beach, and at length drifted through a pass with the swiftly run- 
ning tide in company with innumerable sharks, porpoises and fish, 
great and small, all headed for the bay. Rounding the point I 
threw over the anchor, and enveloped in a blanket with face to- 
wards the stars, slept, as one who manages a small boat for twenty 
hours can sleep. About daylight I was awakened by the thump: 
ing of the mast against the limb of a stunted cedar tree obliquely 
