32 BIRDS OF PREY. 



derers and vagabonds, they live in solitude, or only asso- 

 ciate by pairs. Their parental feeling, indeed, com- 

 monly vanishes with the growth of their offspring ; the 

 young are driven forth with violence, and sometimes 

 even savagely destroyed by these, their fierce, though 

 natural protectors. Nature, apparently willing to dimin- 

 ish or abridge the number of such cruel animals, has 

 limited their annual progeny to a single brood, and their 

 eggs, sometimes 2, never exceed the number of 4. 

 For this purpose their nests are hidden in the clefts of 

 inaccessible rocks, or fixed in the summits of the tallest 

 trees ; and in the nocturnal kinds, in hollow trunks, or 

 the ruins of desolate buildings which their discordant 

 cries fill with sounds of horror ; the diurnal, also in- 

 quiet, gloomy, and suspicious, utter often loud, squealing 

 plaints, or, in the larger kinds, almost wolfish barkings, 

 sounds consonant with their insatiable and sanguinary ap- 

 petites : indeed, when their victims are sufficiently abund- 

 ant, their sole drink is often blood, and like the vptary 

 of intemperance, water, to quench their thirst, is only a 

 last resort. The more powerful birds of this order see 

 with proverbial perfection in the day, and like most oth- 

 ers have the eyes directed sideways. The nocturnal 

 tribe pass away this period in sleep and indolence, only 

 perceiving their prey distinctly in the twilight, and in 

 these the eyes are placed in front. The structure of 

 their digestive organs indicates the stern necessity of this 

 life of rapine. Their prey is either torn to pieces or 

 swallowed whole ; in either case the hair, bones and 

 feathers, indigestible to them, are successively ejected 

 from the stomach, by the mouth, in small balls or pellets. 

 They eat largely when occasion offers, and can also fast 

 for several days. In all this tribe the female is larger 

 than the male, and this disparity sometimes amounts to a 



