NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
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appearance. Dabchicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any dispatch; the reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward out of the true centre of gravity; as the legs of auks and divers are situated too backward.
The Common Coot.
NOTE TO LETTER XLII.
1The flight of the heron seems particularly slow, yet the beats of its wings average one hundred and twenty in a minute, and it makes very rapid progress.
LETTER XLIII.
Selborne, Sept. 9th, 1778.
Dear Sir,—From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to their notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier; who, by the recital of a conversation which passed
