The Flight 
of Birds. 
(158) 
THE BIRD WORLD, 
TKe Flight of Birds. 
Their Winged Mastery of the Air. 
The crow’s-nest of a rigged ship, the 
ledge of a seaward-looking cliff, the 
battlements of a seagirt castle—these 
are the front seats from which to watch 
the wonders of a bird’s flight. No bird 
exhibits these wonders better than a 
Seagull of the lesser black-backed or 
of the herring kind. Many others are 
far swifter of wing; many, such as the 
Green Plover, with its meaningless 
tumbles through the air, and the 
Kestrel, “ wind-hovering ” over a mouse 
or beetle seen far below it with 
its Hawk-like vision, show more 
of what seem rather in the nature 
of fancy tricks; but no others 
pass and pass again with the same de¬ 
liberation, as if for the very purpose 
of exhibition, and at the same time 
show such a perfect mastery of the air, 
such a surprising power of moving 
through it without any effort that is 
apparent and in obedience to what we 
know to be laws of dynamics, but which 
appear far more like special miracles. 
The Dutch Roll. 
The Gulls come sailing up on even 
wing against the wind, and whether you 
be in swiftly-moving ship or on solid 
standing rocks it seems as if they came 
not only with equally little effort, but 
with equal absence of it. And yet, if 
any movement of the wing be made, it 
is not to be seen. There is a tilt from 
side to side, as a skater leans to the 
one side or the other in the “ Dutch 
roll; ” and out of each tilt the bird, 
says Mr. Horace Hutchinson, in the 
Westminster Gazette , seems to gain a 
new store of energy to send it forward 
into the wind, rising or falling as it may 
choose by a change in the set of wing 
or tail quite imperceptible to the eye of 
a human watcher. Then, as it seems, 
it has gone as far as pleases it into the 
wind’s eye, it turns, for these are 
sociable birds, affecting the company 
of man for the flotsam and jetsam that 
come from his ships and castles, and at 
the turn must needs give a flap or two 
of the wings, carrying it across the cur¬ 
rents, before allowing itself to drift down 
them again rather more swiftly than it 
had made its way against them, but with 
no less effort, for where there was none 
before there cannot now be less. 
A Wonder of Wonders. 
It is this ease of going against the 
current with no motive force in evidence 
that is the wonder of all wonders, the 
despair of the aeronauts with their air¬ 
planes. One never knows how foolish 
one may be supposed to be, and it is 
possible that some may imagine the pre¬ 
sent writer capable of the supreme 
fatuity of trying to explain how it is 
done. Far be it from him! The late 
Richard Jefferies, who observed as care¬ 
fully as he wrote charmingly, had a try 
at it, but it cannot be said that his 
attempt was a convincing success. No 
on 2 can have known better than he that 
he was attempting the impossible, his 
aim was to state, rather than to solve, 
the problems; and even that is a work 
of high illumination, for it is quite cer¬ 
tain that the majority of people, watch¬ 
ing a bird in flight, do not regard the 
feat with any great wonder, just be¬ 
cause it is familiar. 
Bacon has told us that wonder is the 
beginning of knowledge, and the good 
folk whom these common things do not 
strike as wonderful, have perhaps not 
yet made the beginning. In all pro¬ 
bability they never will. So that is one 
among the many good things that 
Jefferies did for us, typical of much of 
