The Flight 
of Birds. 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
(159) 
the service rendered by the thinkers 
about nature/whether their thought take 
the artistic or the scientific' form, point¬ 
ing out how very much there is to admire 
and to wonder at in the quite common 
surroundings of our lives. It is seldom, 
however, that, these pleasant and pro¬ 
fitable men preached, and this that has 
just been written seems to be falling 
perilously near preaching and the smug 
maxims of the copy-book. A return to 
the Gulls riding the wind may restore 
tone. 
It adds to the perplexities of the 
would-be theoretical solvers of the 
problems that the methods of the prac¬ 
tical solvers, those which actually per¬ 
form the marvels of flight, are so widely 
different. The movement of the wings 
of the Gull breasting its way against 
the wind is so slight that the human 
eye cannot see it. The very wings of 
the Hawk-moths, hovering to suck, with 
their, long tongues, the honey from the 
flower-bells, are themselves invisible 
from the very rapidity of their vibra¬ 
tion. There seems to be no just pro¬ 
portion between the excessive energy 
which these expend with the object of 
remaining motionless in the air and the 
effortless gliding of the Gulls in the 
wind’s teeth. Possibly this immobility 
of the body makes the strongest demand 
of all on the energies of the wings if 
it is prolonged beyond a very brief 
moment. The wing movement of the 
hovering Kestrel is almost incessant. 
Marvellous Strength. 
There is another splendid exponent of 
the power of flight, the Gannet, that 
has a moment of arrest, rather like the 
Kestrel’s, but much briefer, before it 
pounces on its prey. The great strength 
of the wings in keeping the bird aloft 
is shown by the startling effect which the 
The Lapwing or Peewit. 
One of the most graceful and beautifully formed birds of the field. It is a good friend to the 
farmer in the destruction of insect life, and its eggs are much valued by epicurians.] • - 
