Slots and the Wings of Birds

Extract

It was a great revelation to me to read Lieut.-Comdr. Graham's study of the “Safety Devices on Wings of Birds,” reprinted in the Journal of the Aeronautical Society of January, 1932. I had always believed that the gaps formed by the tip feathers on a bird's wing were not strictly comparable to slots, because from a superficial observation of birds’ wings, it appeared that the slots were running in the wrong direction, namely, from the top to the lower surface of the wing. Lieut.-Comdr. Graham's outstanding contribution is his discovery of the reason for the emargination of the web of the slot forming wing tip feathers. There can be no doubt that this arrangement is aerodynamically equivalent to a multi-slotted wing.