All these types of record maker, therefore, are quite outclassed. If we could not find any real competition for the automobile in the animate world, we must seek it in bird-land. Here, it might be supposed, the space devourer would find a match. But it is not quite certain that such is the case. The old-time books on natural history tell us, to be sure, of flight speeds that make the new records seem slow. They credited the European swift, for example, with two hundred and fifty miles an hour. But more recent observers, made cautious by the scientific spirit of our age, are disposed to discredit such estimates, which confessedly are little better than guesses. The only officially timed bird flights are the flights of homing pigeons; and here the record credits the homing bird with only one hundred miles an hour. This means 124 feet a second, as against the motor's 193. According to these figures, the automobile could give the pigeon a start of almost two thousand feet and yet sweep forward and overtake it in its flight, before it passed the mile-post. Perhaps the comparison is not quite fair, since no doubt the pigeon may perform some individual miles of its journey at more than the average speed; but it may well be doubted whether its maximum ever reaches the mile-rate of 27.33 seconds. It is within the possibilities, however, that some other birds have even surpassed this speed. The falcon, for example, is probably a swifter bird than the pigeon, at least for short distances. Some one indeed has credited the hawks with a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an hour. But this, I feel sure, is a great exaggeration. I once saw a hen harrier pursue a prairie-chicken, without seeming to gain appreciably for a long distance; yet the prairie-chicken is by no means among the speediest of birds. Many of our ducks, for example, quite outclass it; indeed I should be disposed to admit that the teal or the canvasback at full speed might give the automobile a race.