1 6 WINTER SUNSHINE. 



force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow 

 for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirec- 

 tion that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day 

 he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, ris- 

 ing and falling as he comes up toward you, carving his 

 way through the resisting currents by a slight oscilla- 

 tion to the right and left, but never once beating the 

 air openly. 



This superabundance of wing power is very un- 

 equally distributed among the feathered races, the 

 hawks and vultures having by far the greater share of 

 it. They cannot command the most speed, but their 

 apparatus seems the most delicate and consummate. 

 Apparently a fine play of muscle, a subtle shifting of 

 the power along the outstretched wings, a perpetual 

 loss and a perpetual recovery of the equipoise, sustains 

 them and bears them along. AVith them flying is a 

 luxury, a fine art, not merely a quicker and safer means 

 of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free 

 and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and move- 

 ment rest. They are not so much going somewhere, 

 from this perch to that, as they are abandoning them- 

 selves to the mere pleasure of riding upon the air. 



And it is beneath such grace and high-bred leisure 

 that Nature hides in her creatures the occupation of 

 scavenger and carrion eater ! 



But the worst thing about the buzzard is his silence. 

 The crow caws, the hawk screams, the eagle barks, but 

 the buzzard says not a word. So far as I have ob- 



