TllK 081’UKY. 
1 1 
ill their occupation of feeding. In Shetland, where trout are 
ahnndaiit and hut little care is taken to preserve them, it has 
hilt few persecutors; although in tlie hooded crow it finds 
both persecutor and friend, as I have at various times experi- 
enced to my annoyance. No sooner has the Osprey lieguii 
its meal than the crow, with repeated swoops and loud cries, 
compels it to seek some more peaceful spot, and, immediately 
after picking up such fragments as may have been dropped, 
returns to the charge again and again until the comfortless 
repast is at length finished. Led by the outcries and peculiar 
behaviour of the crow, I have sometimes endeavoured to 
stalk the nobler bird, but invariably without success, the latter 
never being allowed to remain long enough in one place to 
enable me to approach within shot. 
The immediate calls of hunger being appeased, the Osprey 
flies rapidly away, usually soaring with no perceptible motion 
of the wings, and in the most graceful curves, until it attains 
a height to which the eye can scarcely follow without pain. 
This habit has been regarded by naturalists as a means of 
procuring rest, a siesta in fact, far beyond all molestation, — a 
theory, however, recently demolished by the Duke of Argyll, 
who clearly proves that the muscles immediately connected 
with flight are never in such a severe state of tension as when 
supporting a bird upon motionless wings.* 
I have not had the opportunity of preserving more than a 
few specimens, but, judging from my own experience, I would 
advise the possessor of one in the flesh to lose no time in 
skinning it; for, like most fish feeders, it very soon begins to 
* The Duke remarks upon the above — “ The passage refers, no doubt, to my 
chapter on Fliglit in the ‘ Reign of Law,’ in whicli I state and explain tliat 
the feat of standing still in the air is one of the most ‘ dillicult feats of wing- 
manship.’ I do not think, however, that it follows from this that birds can 
never sleep on the wing; because they may sleeep more or less when they are 
‘sailing’ or ‘soaring,’ although 1 do not think it all ]>robable. in none of 
these forhis of flight is the bird stationary." In illustration of the difference 
here pointed out, 1 can only too confidently quote an instance of a tired man 
going to sleep while walking, and continuing to walk some few pace.s before 
awaking. The sleeping for ever so short a time without falling is scarcely 
conceivable if one were standing .still — En. 
