Almost Before I Could Lift My Head He Had Reached The End Of The
Lane And Rose Over The Gate
Into the road - not a moments pause before he
made that leap over the gate to see if there was
A waggon or not in the
way; a waggon-load of hay would have blocked the road entirely. How did
he know that a man or a horse would not step into his course at the
instant he topped the bar?
A swallow never hesitates, never looks before he leaps, threads all day
the eyes of needles, and goes on from half-past two in the morning till
ten at night, without so much as disturbing a feather. He is the
perfection of a machine for falling. His round nest is under the eaves,
he throws himself out of window and begins to fall, and keeps on fall,
fall, for twenty hours together. His head is bullet-shaped, his neck
short, his body all thickened up to the shoulders, tailing out to the
merest streak of feather. His form is like a plummet - he is not unlike
the heavily weighted minnow used in trolling for pike. Before the bend of
the firmly elastic rod, the leaded minnow slides out through the air,
running true and sinking without splash into the water. It is
proportioned and weighted so that its flight, which is a long fall, may
be smooth, and perfectly under control. If wings could be put to the
minnow, it would somewhat resemble the swallow. For the swallow is made
to fall, and his wings to catch him, and by resisting his descent these
outstretched planes lift him again into the sky. He does not fall
perpendicularly, the angle of his fall is prolonged and very low, and the
swifter he goes the more nearly it approximates to the horizontal. I
think he goes swifter when flying just over the ground than when lounging
in the easy hammock of the atmosphere. My swallow that came down the
lane, in twenty yards opened his wings twenty times and checked his fall,
almost grazing the earth, and imperceptibly rose a little, like a flat
stone thrown by a boy which suddenly runs up into the air at the end of
its flight. He made no blow with his wings; they were simply put out to
collect the air in the hollow of their curves, and so prolong his fall.
Falling from morn till night, he throws himself on his way, a machine for
turning gravity into a motive force. He fits to the circumstances of his
flight as water fits to the circumstances of the vessel into which it is
poured. No thought, no stop, no rest. If a waggon had been in the way,
still he would have got left or right through the very eye of the needle.
If a man had been passing, the rush of his wings would not have disturbed
the light smoke from his cigar. Farther up the lane there are two
gateways opposite without gates. Through these swallows are continually
dashing, and I have often felt when coming up the lane as if I must step
on them, and half checked myself. I might as well try to step on
lightning. A swallow came over the sharp ridge of a slate roof and met a
slight current of wind which blew against that side of the shed and rose
up it. The bird remained there suspended with outstretched wings, resting
on the up-current as if the air had been solid, for some moments. He rode
there at anchor in the air. So buoyant is the swallow that it is no more
to him to fly than it is to the fish to swim; and, indeed, I think that a
trout in a swift mountain stream needs much greater strength to hold
himself in the rapid day and night without rest. The friction of the
water is constant against him, and he never folds his fins and sleeps.
The more I think the more I am convinced that the buoyancy of the air is
very far greater than science admits, and under certain conditions it is
superior to water as a supporting medium. Swift and mobile as is the
swallow's wing, how much swifter and how much more mobile must be his
eye! This rapid and ever-changing course is not followed for pleasure as
if it were a mazy dance. The whole time as he floats, and glides, and
wheels, his eye is intent on insects so small as to be invisible to us at
a very short distance. These he gathers in the air, he sees what we
cannot see, his eyes are to our eyes as his wings are to our limbs. If
still further we were to consider the flow of the nerve force between the
eye, the mind, and the wing, we should be face to face with problems
which quite upset the ordinary ideas of matter as a solid thing. How is
it that dull matter becomes thus inexpressibly sensitive? Is not the
swallow's eye a miracle? Then his heart, for he sings as he flies; he
makes love and converses, and all as he rushes along - his hopes, his
fears, his little store of knowledge, and his wonderful journey by-and-by
to Africa. Remember, he carries his life in his wings as we should say in
our hands, for if by chance he should strike a solid object, his great
speed renders the collision certain death. It stuns him, and if he
recovers from that his beak is usually broken so that he must starve.
Happily such accidents are rare. The great rapidity of a bird's heart
beating so fast seems to render it peculiarly susceptible to death from
shock. Great fright will sometimes kill a bird, as for instance, when
they have wandered inside a room, and been thoughtlessly held in some
one's hand. Without visible injury, the heart, after beating excessively
violently, almost as rapidly slows, the nictitating membrane is drawn
over the eyes, the head falls to one side, and the bird becomes lifeless
from nervous exhaustion.
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