612 REPTILES -AND > BIRDS. 
which the bird uses with much skill to disable the various snakes 
of which its food principally consists. It has on its head a tuft of 
long feathers, which can be raised at will. This has been the origin 
of its name, in allusion to the custom that clerks had of placing their 
pen behind their ear in the days when goose-quills were used for 
writing. Its toes are short, and its claws blunt and well-adapted for 
walking. It consequently runs very rapidly; hence it sometimes 
obtains the name of Messenger Bird. 
A contest between a Secretary Bird and a serpent is a most 
curious sight. ‘The reptile, when attacked suddenly, stops and rears 
itself up, swelling its neck and showing anger by shrill hissings. 
“ At this instant,” says Levaillant, “the bird of prey, spreading 
one of his wings, holds it in front of him, and covers both his legs 
as well as the lower part of his body with it as if with a buckler. 
The reptile makes a spring at his enemy; the bird makes a bound, 
and, spurning the serpent with his wing, retreats again, jumping 
about in every direction in a mode which to a spectator appears 
highly grotesque. He soon returns to the combat, ever presenting 
to the venomous tooth of his adversary nothing but the end of his 
well-protected wing; and whilst the latter is fruitlessly expending 
its poison by biting the callous feathers, the bird is inflicting 
vigorous blows with his other wing. At last the reptile, stunned 
and wavering, rolls at full length in the dust; the bird then cleverly 
catches hold of it, and throws it several times up into the air, 
until, the victim becoming exhausted and powerless, the bird crushes 
its skull with his sharp-pointed bill. The serpent is then swallowed 
whole by its conqueror, unless it is too big, in which case it is first 
torn in pieces.” 
The Secretary Bird does not feed exclusively on serpents ; it also 
consumes lizards, tortoises, and even insects; its voracity is extreme, 
and it possesses a power of digestion which is really surprising. 
Levaillant killed one, the stomach of which contained twenty-one 
small tortoises (still whole); eleven lizards, each eight or nine inches 
long; three serpents, of a length varying from two to two and a half 
feet ; a perfect heap of grasshoppers and other insects ; and, lastly, a 
great pellet of various remains which it had not been able to assimi- 
late, and which would have ultimately been vomited up. 
These birds are natives of the arid plains of South Africa. They 
pair about the month of July, the male birds having first engaged in 
sanguinary conflicts for the choice of their mates. Their nest, which 
is flat and lined on the inside with down and feathers, is constructed 
in the thickest bushes, or on the,loftiest trees, in which two or three 
