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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XL 



planes." {Encycl. Brit., art. "Aeronautes, — re flight.") It has 

 been pointed out to me that it is extremely improbable that a 

 flying fish's wings can assume this concave shape. If this be so, 

 "from 9 to 28" may be substituted for "between three and four" 

 times, above. 



Need I go on ? I am afraid so — superstitions, especially 

 learned ones, die hard. So to the second parallel offered us, the 

 parachute. The term implies the act of falling through the air, 

 and not the horizontal or the rising motion with which we are 

 dealing. Still, the word has been used in explanation of the fish's 

 supposed deeds, and I will try to deal with it and at the same time 

 keep clear of the pitfalls which will surround the effort. 



Professor Mobius puts the speed of the flying-fish as "greatly 

 exceeding that of a ship going 10 miles an hour." George Bennett 

 {Wanderings in Neiv Sovth Wales, vol. 1, p. 31, 1834), much 

 quoted, puts its extreme time in air at 30 seconds "by the watch," 

 and its distance at 200 yards; this works out at rather over 13^ 

 miles an hour, extreme rate. It will, perhaps, give a sufficiently 

 large margin to call the fish's average speed 15 miles an hour. 



Now if wind and a body, either or both in motion, meet at a 

 rate of 15 miles an hour directly against each other, the body hav- 

 ing 1 square foot of surface, the pressure exerted thereon will be 

 1.107 lbs. That, I think, implies that if a flying-fish weighing a 

 little over a pound and having a wing-surface of 144 square inches 

 (an impossibly large one, of course, for such a fish) were falling 

 through still air, it would descend at the rate of about 15 miles an 

 hour; or, on the other hand, if it were in a winfl blowing 15 miles 

 an hour straight upward from the sea (an impossibly favoring 

 wind, of course) it would just be supported. I will leave it entirely 

 to my readers to imagine the effect in the second case upon our 

 fish of reducing its wing-area from the suppositious 144 sq. inches 

 to its actual 62 sq. inches. 



If the reader's imagination is not suflicient to drop the fish into 

 the sea at once by the re.liictioii, tlicii let him add the efl'ect of 

 removing as much support as would be taken away l)y changing 

 the impossible upward-blowing wind into the ordinary horizontal 

 one at the same 15 miles an hour speed, meeting the wings at an 

 acute angle. There are pitfalls here, so I will avoid angles and 



