Country Life
BIRDS AND PLANES.
We are probably on the way to discover secrets of bird instinct and migration by help of the aeroplane, though the latest theory of aviators that birds are driven purely by the compulsion of air currents is quite certainly wrong. The whole relation of students of mechanical flight to birds is of peculiar interest. Orville Wright once told me at great length how he and his brother watched birds for years in order to filch from them the secrets of their skill, but dis- covered nothing, or nothing of value, till they themselves could fly. Then several secrets leapt to the eye. Most of them concerned the use of air currents, especially more or less vertical draughts ; and the Wrights; probably exaggerating the truth, believed that some birds, especially the buzzard, which they studied more than other birds, themselves created or encouraged an upward current by soaring in a narrow spiral
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