THE WINGS. 
71 
be swallowed for a meal, and in these we accordingly find 
a spread and power of wing truly astonishing. We cannot 
take a better example than our common Swift, the largest of 
our Swallow tribe, whose well-known scream and rapid flight 
must be familiar to every one. It has to seek its livelihood 
solely in the air, on insects so small that we can with 
difficulty perceive them, even if slowly passing before our 
eyes. It could not, therefore, live a day, unless gifted with 
extraordinary powers of flight ; it must not only be able to 
move rapidly forward in a straight line, but also be able to 
turn as quick as thought to the right or left, upwards or 
downwards, to catch its minute prey. And such is the case ; 
the bird is so light that it weighs little more than an ounce, 
and yet the spread of its wings, from tip to tip, is not less 
than eighteen inches. But extraordinary as these propor- 
tions are, in length of wing, compared with weight, in this 
our British species, they are exceeded in a newly discovered 
species in the East Indies, called the Javanese Crested 
Swallow,^ whose uncommon length of wing indicates a speed 
far beyond that of our Swift. Other birds, again, there are, 
which require additional powers, not in the air, but under 
water, their food consisting entirely of the fish they are 
enabled to catch, by diving after them with greater speed 
than the fish can swim. Here it is evident a long, wide- 
spreading wing, like the Swift’s, would be very inconvenient ; 
accordingly, in birds of this tribe, we find the wings much 
smaller, and so formed that they can be used as oars or fins, 
which in one division of the Penguin tribe they very much 
resemble, the short feathery covering upon them having much 
the appearance of scales. Of the true Penguins we have 
none in this country, but we have, however, many species, 
even in England, which live on fish, having wings, if not so 
much like fins as those of the Penguins, at least so very 
small, comparatively speaking, that we may refer to them as 
illustrations of the subject before us, — we mean the Divers or 
Grebes, — one of the most beautiful of which, and at the same 
Macropteryx longipennis. 
