42 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
We hear considerable during these 
days of the house-fly as a spreader of dis¬ 
ease. The toad is the mortal enemy of 
the house-fly. 
When winter’s firm grip is finally 
broken and the roadside pools are filled 
to the brim and warmed with the advanc¬ 
ing sun, then in the dusk of the evening, 
comes the low trilling love song of the 
toads, not to be confused with the shriller 
note of the frogs. Listen for it next 
spring and when you have learned to 
distinguish it the toad will have made 
one more friend and protector. In his 
humble and defenceless state he needs 
many. 
The Soaring of Birds. 
The following theory of the soaring of 
birds, recently given by Wright Broth¬ 
ers in a magazine article, may be of in¬ 
terest to those who like myself have 
watched the soaring of hawks and buz¬ 
zards many a time and wondered how 
they did it without flapping their wings 
and yet rose thousands of feet. 
“A bird is really an aeroplane. The 
portions of its wings near the body are 
used as planes of support, while the more 
flexible parts, when flapped, act as pro¬ 
pellers. Some of the soaring birds are 
not much more than animated sailing 
machines. A buzzard can be safely kept 
in an open pen thirty feet across and ten 
feet high. He cannot fly out of it; in 
fact, we know from observation made by 
ourselves that he cannot fly for any dis¬ 
tance up a grade of one to six. Yet these 
birds, sailing through the air, are among 
the commonest sights through a great 
section of the country. Everyone who 
has been outdoors has seen a buzzard or 
a hawk soaring; everyone who hasbeen to 
sea has seen the gulls sailing after a steam¬ 
ship for hundreds of miles with scarcely 
a movement of the wings. All these 
birds are doing the same thing; they are 
balancing on rising currents of air. The 
buzzards and hawks find the currents 
blowing upward off the land; the gulls 
thatfollow the steamship from New York 
to Florida are merely sliding down hill a 
thousand miles on rising currents in the 
wake of the steamer, in the atmosphere 
and on the hot air rising from the smoke¬ 
stacks. On a clear, warm day the buz¬ 
zards find the high, rotary rising currents 
of air and go sailing round and round in 
them. On damp, windy days they hang 
above the edge of a steep hill on the air 
which comes rising up its slope. From 
their position in the air they can glide 
down at will.” 
So far as the writer knows, this is the 
only theory that explains with any sat¬ 
isfaction how birds rise thousands of feet 
without a single flap of their wings. It 
seems plain enough that an upward wind 
would raise the bird, and that by prop¬ 
erly slanting the surface of the wings the 
birds can sail in any direction, and there 
is, no doubt, a proper inclination of the 
wings that would keep the bird in a 
stationary position. 
The theory equally well explains that 
the bird can be raised by a wind that 
blows upward with a slant. Any upward 
movement of the wind sufficiently strong 
will raise the bird, regardless of what the 
lateral movement of the wing may be, 
and the sailing of the bird in any direc¬ 
tion is merely getting the proper balance 
between the proper gravity and the 
power of the w r ind. 
With an upward slanting wind it 
seems possible for the bird to sail against 
the wind and maintain its height. We 
know that in a still air the bird can 
