22 



JOURNAL OF MAINP: ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



birds in any of our States, and their 

 bulletin will be a source of delight to 

 all who are interested in the birds. We 

 wish our Cal. brethren great success as 

 a society and in their official organ. 



Birds in the Bible. 



PROF. A. L. LANE. 



Read before the Maine Ornithological 

 Societi/ at Brunswick, Dec. 27, 1899. 



Any writings deserve to be ranked as 

 true literature which are so saturated 

 with truth, life, beauty, that they appeal 

 not to one people or age but to many 

 ages and peoples and that they take 

 hold of the heart of the entire race with 

 an unchanging vitality of grasp. Hu- 

 man life, its experiences, its hopes, 

 fears, joys, sorrows, loves, hates, his- 

 tories, destinies, must form the chief 

 elements of such literature ; but human 

 life is so moulded and coloretl by its 

 surroundings that these cannot be neg- 

 lected, and therefore nature in its ever- 

 changing moods aiid manifestations 

 must enter freely into those works that 

 appeal to universal interest. Nature 

 touches us in ways without number. In 

 endless variety of forms, unceasingly, 

 by day and by night, by sunshine and 

 shadow, by star and planet, by sea or 

 land, by plant life or animal life, nature 

 enters into the world's experiences and 

 interests, and therefore must form a 

 large part of the world's literature. 



As birds are found everywhere where 

 men can live they must enter freely into 

 the books of all literatures, and espe- 

 cially into such writings as are in clos- 



est touch with natural objects and move- 

 ments. Our Bible is such a book ; out- 

 of-doors, breezy, intensely human and 

 natural, as well as divine, it touches all 

 the keys of feeling and action and draws 

 its subjects and illustrations from the 

 widest and most varied sources, liiids 

 are in it, of course. 



The eagle is mentioned in more than 

 a score of passages and for a great va- 

 riety of purposes. Its stiong wings are 

 used to describe the power by which the 

 Israelites were brought out of Egypt, 

 and ultimately from slavery into nation- 

 ality ; "I bear you on eagles' wings," is 

 the beautiful statement of the way in 

 which the divine interposition led them 

 forth and bore them on to safety. The 

 eagle's care for its young and the way 

 in which it teaches them to Hy, by break- 

 ing up the nest and catching the young 

 upon its wings, is very graphically 

 described in another place as an illus- 

 tration of God's care for his people. 

 "As an eagle stirreth up hef nest, liut- 

 lereth over her young, t^prt^adetii abroad 

 her wings, taketh them, beareth them 

 on her wings ; so the Lord alone did 

 lead them." I remember reading a 

 description of such a scene as this as 

 witnessed by a traveler in the great 

 canon of the Colorado, where the eagle's 

 nest was nearly a mile above the stream 

 below, high up on the rocky side of the 

 ravine, and where the young birds were 

 allowed to fall for a long distance before 

 being overtaken and borne up on the 

 wings of the mother bird. Moses may 

 well have witnessed the occurrence which 

 he so graphically describes many times 

 during his forty years experience of life 

 in the open air, as a keeper of flocks and 

 herds. The eagle is swift as well as 

 strong. A nation was to come against 



