Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1917 — Power of Flight That Is Possessed by Birds One of the Wonders of Nature. [ARTICLE]

Power of Flight That Is Possessed by Birds One of the Wonders of Nature.

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 confessed himself ignorant; and there is something truly marvelous in the mechanism which controls the scythelike 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 in birds, while some of them speak on very insufficient evidence, says the Boston Transcript. Witness Michelet’s statement that the swallow flies at the~rate of U4O 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 Im 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 per hour, this remarkable rate is not to be looked for in any of the birds of the swallow kind -

In their migrations-swallows stick close to land, and never leave it unless~cnmpcttM.'~"TKey cross straits at’ the narrowest part, and are the most easily fatigued of all birds. Apparently, though they possess considerable, speed; fli’ey Tiave no powers of sustained flight. ‘ ?