Marvels of Flight.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 47, 19 June 1917, Page 2

Marvels of Flight.

There is nothing more wonderful in Nature than the power of flight possessed by birds, and no subject which yields more startling facts upon investigation. “The way of an eagle in the air” is one of those things of which Solomon expressed himself ignorant ; and there is something truly marvellous in the mechanism which controls the scythc-like sweep of wings peculiar to most birds of prey. Yet even naturalists of, the first order have had little or nothing to say about the power of flight of birds, while some of them speak on very insufficient, evidence. Witness Michelet's statement that the swallow files at the rate of 240 miles an hour. Roughly, this gives us 1,000 miles in four hours, but naturally, even in its swiftest dashes, the swallow does not attain to anything like this speed. But the Duke of Argyll is rather under than over the mark when he computes the speed at more than 100 miles per hour.

The mechanism of flight in the swallow is carried through an ascending scale, until in the swift it reaches its highest degree, both in endurance and facility of evolution. Although there are birds which may, and probably do, attain to the speed of 150 miles an hour, this remarkable rate is not to he looked for in any of the birds of the swallow kind. In their migrations swallows stick close to land, and never leave it unless compelled. They cross straits at the narrowest part, and are the most easily fatigued of all birds.- Apparently, though they may possess considerable speed, they have no powers of sustained flight. These attributes belong in the most remarkable degree to certain ocean birds. Anyone who has crossed the Atlantic must have noticed that gulls accompany the ship over the whole distance—or, at least, are never absent. The snowy ‘‘sea swallows,” as the terns are called, seem quite tireless ; though the petrel and the albatross alone deserve the name of ocean birds. No sea deserts seem to bound the range of the petrels, and they are found at every distance from land. Different species haunt different seas—f from the fulmar in the far north to the giant petrel, which extends its flight to the ice banks of the south. Here the Antarctic and snowy petrels appear, often floating upon the drift ice, and never leaving those dreary seas.

Another bird of immense wingpower is the tiny storm petrel, the smallest web-footed bird knowm.