Song Birds and Water Fowl 
by any other species of the race. They admir- 
ably picture forth the heroic side of villainy ; 
they are the Attilas, the Neros, the Borgias 
of bird-history. Neither refined, nor, in the 
usual sense, beautiful, they strikingly possess 
the very commanding attribute of rugged and 
pronounced personality ; and this rare quality 
is always a strong rival of both beauty and 
goodness for the admiration of mankind. Even 
the more ignoble vulture, kite, and buzzard, 
the very type of carrion scavengers though they 
be, are not entirely powerless to elicit a certain 
quality of lofty approbation ; while hawks and 
eagles, by a life as taciturn and solitary, and 
by a certain nobility of form, combined with 
those impressive evolutions in the air which 
cannot fail to elevate the mind, are qualified to 
stimulate the thoughts of the observer to an in- 
tense degree. The distant and the silent are 
alike in always being strangely fascinating to 
the human mind ; and these qualities are com- 
bined in the birds of prey. The imagination 
plays most untiringly around the vague and 
enigmatical. 
As I stood by the Hudson River, watching 
a large flock of wild ducks, called buffie-heads, 
that frequent all our larger streams in the win- 
196 
