Bird and Butterfly Mysteries: The Truth About Migration

By Bernard Acworth

As part of his challenge to the theory of evolution, the outspoken creationist presents alternative theories of bird flight and migration.

In 1932, Bernard Acworth established the Evolution Protest Movement (now called the Creation Science Movement) for the purpose of criticizing evolutionary theory in scientific terms. A freelance journalist and amateur ornithologist, he took aim at the accepted science of ornithology with a keenly skeptical eye. Here, Acworth addresses topics including bird and butterfly migration, and the peculiarities of the cuckoo.

In Bird and Butterfly Mysteries, Acworth presents a close examination of the science concerning the flight of winged animals. Through this analysis, he exposes errors that call into question many of the major conclusions reached by professional ornithologists. While the two Laws of Currents Acworth proposes in this volume have since appeared in other works on ornithology, he has never received due credit for their discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philosophical Library Open Road
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504067058

Bernard Acworth

Bernard Acworth (1885–1963) was an English submariner, writer, evangelical Christian, and creationist.

Book preview

Bird and Butterfly Mysteries

The Truth About Migration

Bernard Acworth

Contents

INTRODUCTION by BRIAN VESEY-FITZGERALD

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Part I. Bird Migration and Other Phenomena

1A SCEPTICAL AGE PASSING

2THE REIGN OF LAW

3THE FIRST LAW OF CURRENTS

4THE SECOND LAW OF CURRENTS

5AN ASSUMPTION

6CURVES OF FLIGHT

7TERRESTRIAL RELATIVITY AS AN ENVIRONMENT

8THE ‘MIGRATION’ OF SWALLOWS

9THE FLYING ‘FEATS’ OF GULLS

10 THE EBB AND FLOW OF WIND AND BIRDS

11 THE DESERTION OF NESTS AND OTHER PHENOMENA

12 THE FLIGHT FACTOR IN INSECTS

13 THE EVOLUTIONARY ‘LAW OF DISPERSAL’

14 BIRD ‘MIND’

Part II. The Cuckoo Mystery

15 THE CUCKOO’S SECRET

16 EVOLUTION AND THE CUCKOO

17 PRESENT THEORIES EXAMINED

18 IS THE CUCKOO A HYBRID?

19 THE POSSIBILITY OF PROOF

Part III. Butterfly Migration and Other Phenomena

20 BUTTERFLIES

21 THE EGG

22 THE CATERPILLAR

23 THE CHRYSALIS

24 THE BUTTERFLY

25 BUTTERFLY SENSES

26 MIMICRY

27 AERIAL PARASITES

28 THE ‘MIGRATION’ OF BUTTERFLIES

29 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION AND DISPERSION

30 DISTRIBUTION AND VARIATION OF BRITISH BUTTERFLIES

31 INSTINCT

CONCLUSION

ADDENDUM

INDEX

Illustrations in Colour

MIGRATION ROUTE OF AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER

CUCKOO AND OTHER BIRDS’ EGGS

LIFE HISTORY OF FOUR REPRESENTATIVE SPECIES OF BUTTERFLIES

Introduction

Bernard Acworth is a very remarkable man. In an age of sycophancy and compromise he sounds the true note of controversy. To find anything comparable to it in English literature we have to go back to the eighteenth century, to Swift (whose biographer, fittingly, he is) and to Pope. And how refreshing it is! A man of wide learning, he refuses, in an age in which theories are all too readily accepted as facts, to conform. Not without reason has he been called the Samuel Butler of our time. His enquiring and highly original mind takes nothing for granted.

In this book Captain Acworth returns to his old battlefield and his target is once again the professional ornithologist (and, though to less extent, the entomologist also) and his theories of flight and migration. Many people will, I think, remember his remarkable book This Bondage, a book of quite extraordinary interest, especially to airmen. The airmen were, in fact, deeply interested, and the book was widely and enthusiastically reviewed in the aeronautical press. It should have been of equal interest to the ornithologists, for it was addressed to them. But it made plain that some famous ornithologists had talked and written a deal of nonsense about bird flight, and the ornithologists (or most of them) ignored the book altogether—at least publicly. That they did not privately is shown by the fact that to-day some, at least, of his ideas about bird flight have been adopted by them, though without acknowledgment of the source of their conversion. Whether in due course the same thing is going to happen with other of his theories about bird flight—theory, in this connection is the wrong word: Bernard Acworth’s laws of currents are facts, mathematical certainties—and whether, in that event, they are then carried to their logical conclusion, is a matter of opinion and something that only time will show.

The whole of Captain Acworth’s thesis is, of course, a reasoned challenge to the theory of evolution. This theory is now widely accepted as a fact. It is not a fact: it has never been anything more than a theory. And it is not, strictly speaking, a scientific attitude of mind: it is a philosophical attitude. The same is true, of course, of the anti-evolution point of view. I am, myself, an evolutionist, though I find myself unable to swallow all the speculation with which the theory is nowadays draped. And I have to confess to finding little comfort in the blood-stained and barbarous progress of man and no comfort whatever in the position which he has now achieved. Bernard Acworth is a convinced antievolutionist. To be an anti-evolutionist in these days of facile acceptance requires considerable courage, a quality he possesses in abundance. Here is the unfashionable point of view, stated clearly and forcefully. It cannot fail to make the reader ponder deeply.

Quite apart from this question of evolution, I, personally, find myself in disagreement with my old friend on a number of points—and particularly on the whole problem of the cuckoo. (For, despite the books, it remains a problem: there is much connected with this enterprising bird which we simply do not understand.) I enjoy reading him all the more because of these disagreements.

I have not the scholarship to refute his arguments. And it is noteworthy that those who have, or whose status in the world of natural history suggests should have, do not do so. Captain Acworth’s ideas and the arguments with which he supports them have been before the public for a good many years now. But no ornithologist has refuted them, and supported that refutation with reasoned argument backed by facts. It is the modern technique to ignore that which you do not approve. It is worth while remembering that orthodox science once strongly disapproved of Charles Darwin: had the same technique been in vogue in his day his theory of evolution might never have blossomed. Ostracism is not the gateway to progress. It is very much to be hoped that this book will receive the expert and dispassionate consideration which it deserves. If Bernard Acworth’s thesis can be convincingly demolished, then our knowledge will be immeasurably increased. That, surely, is a challenge worthy of a man of learning and spirit?

B

RIAN

V

ESEY

-F

ITZGERALD

Preface

There can seldom, if ever, have been a time when interest in Natural History was so widespread, and so increasingly stimulated by radio talks and debates, and by newspaper articles and books. And of all spheres of Natural History, none is more universally popular than that of Birds, and, to a rather less extent, of butterflies, and the mysteries still alleged to surround them, particularly their comings and goings, their ‘migrations’ and ‘vagrancies’, and the nature of their ‘instincts’ and ‘minds’.

Indeed, in recent years, ornithology, and particularly bird-watching, has become not only a hobby for tens of thousands of amateurs, but a profession to an ever-increasing number of ornithologists who, as professors, research workers, sanctuary wardens and authors, make the study and observation of birds, in all parts of the world, their life work and means of livelihood.

The Author has, as a layman, been for over a quarter of a century a student of birds, though to be truthful, as a very careful reader of the books by those who claim to be, and are accepted as, authorities, rather than as a regular and systematic field naturalist himself. At the very outset of his studies of birds and butterflies, and particularly in those spheres of their life histories which involve directly, or indirectly, the flight factor, he detected errors with such far-reaching effects as to render the most important of the conclusions of ornithological authority as fallacious as the premises upon which the conclusions were, and for the most part still are, founded. It is not proposed to discuss these fallacies here as they form the subject-matter, and it is hoped, the interesting subject-matter, of this book. All herein contained, subject to considerable amendments, additions, and deletions, has appeared previously in The Cuckoo and other Bird Mysteries and in Butterfly Miracles and Mysteries; the original texts, subject to these amendments, being retained unaltered because, in the intervening years, the Author has not been able to improve upon them. The two subjects—birds and butterflies—have now been brought together under one cover because most winged phenomena, especially in the sphere of what is too loosely called ‘migration’, are closely analogous when not actually identical. The fallacies, to which reference has here been made, and which are examined in detail in all parts of this book, are common to birds and butterflies. The amendments to the original texts are, for the most part, to harmonize Parts 1 and 3, and to avoid tedious repetition.

But what he would here point out is this: many years have passed since these fallacies were first exposed, yet ornithological literature, and theories, continue to be permeated by them. It is true that the two ‘Laws of Currents’, which the Author originally enunciated, are beginning to appear in recent ornithological books, or later editions of older ones, and in words which amount to a paraphrase of these laws, and their mathematical effects, as set forth in the following pages. Indeed, use has been freely made of the self-same analogies which are employed in this book to demonstrate, for example, why birds and butterflies feel no wind-pressure in the strongest winds; why they fly in curves; why all air-borne creatures, whether birds or butterflies, are absolutely parasitical to the moving calm in which they fly, and other fundamental consequences of the laws governing movement within an all embracing movement. In one case, the Author’s Dome Analogy, contained in Chapter 7 of this book, is used, the word ‘Cone’ being substituted for ‘Dome’. All this is to the good, and is to be welcomed, in so far as it confirms the validity of the laws the Author originally enunciated, and upon which the whole argument of this book is founded. Had ornithological authorities found them, on enquiry, to be in any way mistaken, they would, so far from reproducing them, have welcomed, and taken, the opportunity of exposing his errors in the official publications of ornithological and entomological societies. But silence rather than criticism has been the rule over a long period of years. In the case of one such society, and perhaps the best known one, an undertaking was given to have the book reviewed in its monthly publication; though the Author was warned that the review would be a very frank and, by implication, hostile one. This undertaking he welcomed but, in fact, no such review has been forthcoming.

A reference has already been made to the immense growth in recent years of ornithological study and its applications. How great these are is emphasized by Sir A. Landsborough Thomson,

C.B., D.SC.

, in his revised edition of Bird Migration. As he shows, under the heading Scientific Investigation, the migration of birds, and allied phenomena, have become the subject of scientific research on a great scale, and Government support for professional ornithology is growing. But as he is at pains to emphasize, this scientific study is essentially observational, and experimental, and thus, as the investigations grow, the number of whole-time observers and experimentalists increases. Indeed, ornithology, once solely a happy hobby and pastime for lay students of nature, is becoming something nearly akin to a great industry in which observational methods are relied upon for the solution of the various alleged mysteries of bird and insect life. And it is just here, as will constantly be shown in the following pages, that the Author has for many years joined issue with generally accepted authorities.

It is true, as already shown, that the inviolable laws which compel, and govern, the movement of birds and butterflies about the world, locally and geographically, are now accepted as correct, but in spite of this, the theories and conclusions about these phenomena are still based upon observations which, if they were valid, would invalidate the laws of currents and flight, which are accepted as true, and confirmed as such by the great scientific journal—Nature, as will be seen in Chapter 5.

The truth is that millions of observations, by thousands of observers, and their multiplication as the years roll on, can never, as is constantly alleged, solve the mysteries they are designed to solve: indeed, owing to their frequent contradictions, they tend to confuse rather than clarify the issue. What inductive reasoning from authentic observations can do, and has done up to the hilt, is to confirm as true the explanations reached by deductive reasoning from verifiable premises, the method employed in the First and Third Parts of this book.

And here a reference should be made to the Second Part, in which the age-old and baffling mystery of the cuckoo is carefully examined, and a suggestion made as to its possible solution. This cuckoo mystery is in a quite different category to the other mysteries because in this case there is no known law from which to start the detective story—for such it really is! The solution proffered by the Author is a theoretical one, and based entirely upon circumstantial evidence, though it is believed that readers will agree that this evidence is very strong, based as it is upon the fact that cuckoos’ eggs are found lying snugly in nests which the greatest ornithologists have themselves pronounced to be I

NACCESSIBLE

—as indeed many of them manifestly are. Furthermore, the solution offered, unlike rival explanations, is capable of proof, as is shown.

In conclusion, the Author must confess, and without shame, that the whole argument of this book constitutes a direct and reasoned challenge to the now widely accepted theory of evolution, in so far, that is to say, as prevailing theories about birds and butterflies are claimed to buttress that philosophical approach, for such it is, to the wonders of the world of nature. The term ‘philosophical’ is used advisedly in preference to the term ‘scientific’ because, as readers will see, the theories which are adversely criticised are as far removed from true science, which means no more and no less than true knowledge, as is darkness from light.

But in no instance has the Author allowed his own philosophical outlook on Natural History to affect his argument which, as he hopes readers will agree, is entirely objective. If his arguments are valid, they prove that there is no common denominator whatever between Man and the Bird and Insect worlds, except in certain physical attributes essential for the manifestation of the mystery, or miracle, of life. These winged creatures, which act with the very quintessence of reason, are without any glimmer of reason of their own. They behave instinctively, and in the concluding chapter of the book the Author has set himself the unusual task of attempting to show, and precisely to define, what instinct really is, and how it is made operative. For the index, he is indebted to Mr Eric Daniels.

And finally, he wishes to express his indebtedness to the many famous ornithologists and entomologists, named and unnamed, for the wealth of facts about birds and butterflies which he has accumulated from their books. If, at times, he has been over-zealous, or sharp, in his criticisms of their conclusions, he hopes that they will forgive him, and attribute it to the exuberance of the comparative youth that the Author enjoyed when first he made them—an exuberance that has diminished with the passing years, though the force and justice of the criticisms, and the differing conclusions to which they give rise, remain, he believes, unimpaired.

June 1955

B

ERNARD

A

CWORTH

Let bigots talk at leisure and heed them not. The study of nature is well pleasing to God and is akin to prayer. Learning the laws of nature, we magnify the First Inventor, the Designer of the World; and we learn to love Him, for great love of God results from great knowledge. Who knows little loves little.

L

EONARDO DA

V

INCI

The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion, but determined to judge for himself. He should not be biased by appearances; have no favourite hypothesis; be of no school; in doctrine acknowledge no master. He should not be a respecter of persons but of things. Truth should be his primary object. If to these qualities be added industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of nature.

M

ICHAEL

F

ARADAY

Part I

Bird Migration and Other Phenomena

Chapter 1

A Sceptical Age Passing

We are emerging from a sceptical age. During the twentieth century no tradition; no personality; no religious, political, social or economic doctrine or dogma, has been treated as sacred or exempt from the scorching pen of criticism. The same is true of scientific theories and dogmas which for long passed as truths that no sane man would challenge.

This twentieth-century scepticism of anything formerly treated as truth has proved a two-edged weapon. In the universality and indiscriminateness of this scepticism much that is once again emerging as true has been treated as false, and much that has been treated as true is being rediscovered as false, with all the tremendous consequences that this implies. On the other hand, the smugness of our forefathers, as some would say, or the over-confidence as the more charitable would put it, has been shattered. There can seldom have been a time when doubt was so widespread, or when lack of conviction on anything was the rule rather than the exception.

But if such a general state of mind has its dangers, as it certainly has, it also has its opportunities. On all hands there are signs of a new yearning for conviction firmly rooted in ascertainable truth. If this is true in the fundamental matters of life it is also true, in a less important way, in such a sphere as natural history which, to most of us, in some form or another, is a hobby and a relaxation from the sterner business of living.

In this book the author has attempted to deal with some of the bird mysteries which, at one time or another, attract the attention of most, and the detailed and concentrated study in their leisure hours of some. There are few creatures in the animal world which have inspired a larger literature than birds. And little wonder when we consider how their beauty and their mysterious ways attract our notice from childhood, and hold it through life. But whereas our forefathers, with few exceptions, were content to enjoy birds, and to take them and their ways for granted, to-day the universal habit of enquiry has led to an increased interest in the whys and wherefores of bird life, and thus to an increasing number of books by expert students which attempt to answer these questionings.

This modest book is of such a nature, but the author, true to the spirit of his age, has not hesitated, when the facts warrant it, to challenge theories which are still the dogmas of an age that is passing.

Though sticking to his theme—some mysteries of bird life—it is inevitable that some of his conclusions will bring him into collision on religious matters with those ornithologists and scientists who have formed different conclusions from the same facts, or, in some cases, from observations which they have believed to be facts but which, on examination, are found to be misapprehensions and not facts at all. This, as will be shown, is especially true of many bird problems which introduce the flight factor.

The strange case of the cuckoo, which is examined in the second part of the book, is in quite another category. Here the author is theorizing, as indeed, if he may respectfully say so, are his ornithological and scientific betters who claim to have solved the cuckoo’s secret. It is hoped, however, that this examination of the cuckoo mystery, and the solution which is offered, may prove of interest, even if it does not carry conviction, to many who have speculated about nature’s Don Juan. Though the author has tried to handle the problem with a light touch befitting the subject, it will be found that the search for the cuckoo’s secret is more than a fascinating detective story in natural history which has baffled the wit of man from time immemorial.

The true solution of some bird mysteries cannot fail to establish as true, or overthrow as false, theories and dogmas which have an important bearing on scientific matters, and on what is commonly called ‘natural religion’. Those who have woven romantic and sentimental philosophies round the comings and goings, the matings and nestings, of birds may resent the conclusions to which the cold light of reason inevitably leads us. But truth, as we know, is often stranger than fiction, and, in a true analysis, more truly romantic because it transfers our wonder from the birds themselves to their Creator.

When the author began to study birds, and what has been written about them by great authorities, he had an open mind on philosophic questions which are inextricably interwoven with bird phenomena as they are, indeed, with every aspect of nature. Twenty years ago the truth or otherwise of the Darwinian explanation of nature was, to the author, an academic question which he had never probed or even considered seriously. He felt no reaction against Nature spelt with a capital N which to-day commands something akin to the worship of modern pagans, as did the god Pan of their ancient counterparts.

But as his study of post-Darwinian books on bird life extended, it became plain to him that not only was the Theory of Organic and Inorganic Evolution the major premise from which all modern theories about birds were approached, but that the conclusions formed from the evolutionary premise were, in their turn, employed to establish the validity of the theory from which the conclusions were drawn. With such an inversion of the generally accepted processes of reasoning it is hardly surprising that modern books on ornithology are as full of agreements on philosophic principles as they are contradictory on facts. In other words, facts do not square with Evolution. When this is blatantly so, we continually come across such expressions as We may assume, which are scattered through Darwin’s Origin of Species to so great an extent as to deprive it of its right to the claim of being a scientific work. Whether the author is justified in making so bold an assertion readers of this book will be able to judge for themselves.

But however this may be, there is one point on which all reflecting folk are agreed, no matter to what conclusions their reflections lead them, and it is this: Truth is one and indivisible, no matter how many ‘facets’, to use the modern jargon, it may present. If, after careful study with an open mind, a man or woman is satisfied that the mysteries of bird life are explicable, and only explicable, by assuming the truth of the theory of organic evolution as expounded by Darwin and his enthusiastic disciples, such a conclusion must inevitably establish Evolution in their minds as the prime cause of all they see about them. Such folk will continue to spell Nature with a capital N. Those, on the other hand, who are satisfied that the facts are opposed to the Darwinian explanation will become ever more disposed to drop the capital N and to accept the birds, and nature generally, as the glorious works of God, Who, as an actual Personal, Living Designer, is, by universal consent of evolutionists themselves, the only Alternative to Evolution.

Throughout this book, as stated in the Preface, the author, while often challenging their conclusions, makes use of the brilliant observations of ornithologists and entomologists to whom all interested in natural history owe so great a debt, including the author himself. It is therefore to those whose conclusions are criticized that this book is dedicated because it is to those that the author is indebted, not only for most of his facts about birds and butterflies, and other insects, but for years of enjoyment in studying the books which are the fruits of their labours.

Chapter 2

The Reign of Law

From the earliest recorded times the flight of birds, their comings and goings, have aroused the interest and wonder of mankind. This interest has been quickened in the twentieth century by the remarkable developments in mechanical flight. Books dealing with the flight and habits of birds, and with their ‘minds’, are frequently appearing, and articles on bird migration, mating, nesting, and other avian phenomena, have become regular features of newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals. There seems, therefore, to be widespread interest on all aspects of bird life, and the supply of ornithological literature keeps pace with the growing desire for information.

The author, not as a scientist, but as a sailor, has himself been a close student of birds for many years, and he has therefore devoted, quite naturally, very close study to ornithological books, articles, and scientific treatises on the flight factor in birds, particularly as this affects the phenomenon of migration and the so-called mind of birds.

He must, however, confess at the outset that his knowledge of the curiosities and mysteries of bird life has been in greater measure derived from the patient and brilliant observations of famous ornithologists in the field rather than from observations of his own. It is therefore upon the evidence collected by others, acknowledged authorities, that the author largely relies to demonstrate the laws upon which leans the argument of this book. This renewed acknowledgment is made at the outset because it has an intimate bearing upon the qualifications of a layman to challenge the conclusions of ornithological and scientific experts on such questions as flight and migration.

In his remarkable book The Reign of Law, the late Duke of Argyll discussed the unchanging nature of law in the physical universe, and in referring to the ‘First Law of Motion’ in particular, he wrote on page 111 as follows:

Like many other laws of the same class, it was discovered not by looking outwards, but by looking inwards; not by observing, but by thinking. The human mind … by careful reasoning … is able, from time to time, to reach now one, now another, of those purely Intellectual Conceptions which are the basis of all that is intelligible to us in the Order of the Material World.

Here, then, is some warrant for a seaman to pit his thinking against the observation of specialists and to contrast the conclusions reached by the two different methods.

Before passing to a consideration of the laws which govern equally the flight of birds and insects, and machines, the author would like to pay his tribute to the philosophical aspect of the late Duke of Argyll’s famous book. It seems to have all the essential elements of a classic, combining as it does extreme simplicity of diction, brilliant analysis and deduction, with a nobility, a humility and an awe, which contrast strangely, and refreshingly, with the unintelligible jargon, mumbo-jumbo, bald assertion, and fantastic speculation which all too often masquerade to-day as ‘science’. With crystal clearness the Duke of Argyll analyses the nature of Law, showing that all physical laws, and indeed spiritual laws, are the bricks and mortar, so to speak, of Design and Purpose, and as little capable of utilizing themselves, or of arranging themselves towards one another in such a manner as to produce the infinite number of natural phenomena that we see around us, or the infinite variety of character to be found in human beings, as are the letters of the alphabet capable of arranging themselves into a great epic poem. Natural laws that are indeed laws, and not mere fancies or theories, must be changeless: before any other conception of law, other than imperfect man-made law, reason staggers and recoils.

If, then, laws are the invisible bricks of which nature is the physical and visible manifestation, it seems to follow that a failure to detect or to interpret a law which is unceasingly and overwhelmingly operative in a particular natural phenomenon must lead to a complete misapprehension of the whole subject to which this law, in its various aspects, is applicable.

If the law is a basic and all-pervading matter upon an understanding of which sound conclusion must rest, a mis-statement of this law, or the overlooking of it, becomes a major false premise. This being so, it is not necessary to emphasize to any reasonable man or woman the deadly nature of a false premise upon which a vast edifice of philosophy and conjecture is raised. This point is well brought out by the Duke of Argyll on page 55:

"We must cast a sharp eye indeed on every form of words which professes to represent a scientific truth. If it be really true in one department of thought, the chances are that it will have its bearing on every other. And if it be not true, but erroneous, its effect will be of a corresponding character; for there is a brotherhood of Error as close as the brotherhood of Truth. Therefore, to accept as a truth that which is not a truth, or to fail in distinguishing the sense in which a proposition may be true from other senses in which it is not true, is an evil having consequences which are indeed incalculable. There are subjects on which one mistake of this kind will poison all the wells of truth, and affect with fatal error the whole circle of our thoughts."

MIGRATION ROUTE OF AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER

Route obtained from the National Geographic Magazine.

Winds obtained from Pilot Charts of U.S. Navy Department.

Here we may leave the Duke of Argyll as a just, and therefore wise, philosopher and pass to his reliability as a scientist and a specialized observer, and in doing so it is of interest to recall his dictum that it is by thinking, not by observing (the method almost exclusively employed by professional scientists and research workers), that hidden truths are brought to light. It is no discredit to the Duke of Argyll, as a thinker, that in his own person as an observer he throws a bright light on the truth of his wise philosophical dictum.

In Chapter III of The Reign of Law he passes from the nature of laws to their application in practice, and he proceeds by inductive reasoning from observation to use his specialized study of birds, and his ‘observation’ of flight, to enunciate certain laws and to show these alleged laws in operation for the benefit of his readers.

One of his laws, however, he has determined by hearsay, or by that ‘observation’ against which he shrewdly warns us. In discussing the various forces which a bird employs, and with which it has to contend, he states again and again that the force of the wind on the outspread wings of the flying bird is one of the governing factors in the dynamics of flight, and a few quotations will suffice to exemplify this vital point.

Speaking of the soaring of birds when a wind is blowing, he writes on page 149:

Gravity is ceaselessly acting on the bird to pull it downwards; and downwards it must go unless there is a countervailing force to keep it up. This force is the force of the breeze striking against the vanes of the wing.

In case it might be argued that the ‘breeze’ may refer to the draught set up by the bird’s wings and not to the bodily movement of the air—the wind-it may be well to quote again from page 161, where, in discussing flight generally, he says:

"When a strong current of air strikes against the wings of a bird, the same sustaining effect is produced as when the wing strikes against the air. Consequently birds with very long wings have this great advantage, that with pre-acquired momentum they can often for a long time fly without flapping their wings at all. Under these circumstances, a bird is sustained very much as a boy’s kite is sustained in the air. The string which the boy holds, and by which he pulls the kite downwards with a certain force, performs for the kite the same offices which its own weight and balance and momentum perform for the bird. The great long-winged oceanic birds often appear to float rather than to fly. The stronger is the gale, their flight, though less rapid, is all the more easy—so easy indeed as to appear buoyant; because the blasts which strike against their wings are enough to sustain the bird with comparatively little exertion of its own, except that of holding the wing-vanes stretched and exposed at proper angles to the wind." Here, then, is a categorical statement which precludes any doubt about the Duke of Argyll’s view of the relation of wind to a bird flying in it. Further examples could, if necessary, be given from this chapter on the flight of birds, which would exemplify his belief, which he raises to the dignity of a law, that a bird experiences pressure from the winds in which it is flying. His belief is erroneous; but before passing to an examination of this fundamental matter it should be said at once that the misapprehension of the Duke of Argyll in 1867 seems to have been shared by the Victorian world of his day. In view of the searching criticism to which The Reign of Law subjects, for example, the theories of Darwin, it seems incredible that this chance of confounding his critic, and of exposing his fallacy, would have escaped Darwin had he been aware of his opportunity. At the same time it must be said at once, as it will later be shown, that had the fallacy of the Duke been known to the great naturalist and his enthusiastic disciples, those evolutionary theories which rest upon bird movement would have appeared, even to themselves, shaky if not altogether untenable.

Lest it may be thought that the belief of the Duke of Argyll and other Victorians is scientifically antiquated, it may be well to quote, out of the large number available, some statements of prominent biologists and ornithologists, written in recent years, which are not only similar in import to paragraphs in the book under discussion, but which, in some cases, reproduce the Duke of Argyll’s explanations almost verbatim, showing that The Reign of Law is