140 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



domestic duties if left to her own efforts ; though 

 among polygamous birds, as we shall subsequently 

 notice, this remark requires to be taken with some 

 modification. The instinct, or whatever it may be 

 called, which leads birds to anticipate, foresee, and 

 provide for this necessity, we cannot, in our pres- 

 ent state of knowledge, trace to its immediate 

 causes; and we must, therefore, rest contented 

 with the knowledge of the observed facts. Some 

 of these are not a little interesting, particularly on 

 account of the close resemblance of the proceed- 

 ings of birds to our own ; a resemblance that does 

 not hold with those of other classes of animals. 



It might be supposed that birds of prey would be 

 in the first instance somewhat afraid of each other 

 in their preliminary communications; at least an 

 entomologist would readily suppose so, from know- 

 ing that it is no uncommon thing among predacious 

 insects for the females to make prey of the males, 

 even after pairing. Birds of prey, however, though, 

 when pressed by hunger, they might not refuse to 

 destroy their own species, are not, like spiders, ac- 

 tuated by indiscriminate cannibal voracity; and 

 though some of the more powerful eagles (Haliatus 

 leucocephalus, SAVIGNY, &c.) will pursue their con- 

 geners and force them to surrender the prey they 

 may have caught, yet we are not aware of any re- 

 corded instance of one eagle making prey of an- 

 other, as spiders are known to do, and as is com- 

 mon among fish. On the contrary, the males and 

 females of birds of prey appear to be more closely 

 attached than those of most other species. They 

 continue together not only during the breeding sea- 

 son, but throughout the year, and even for a long 

 succession of years, at least if we may trust to the 

 circumstantial evidence of a pair of eagles fre- 

 quenting the same locality and building on the 

 same spot. 



The evidence, indeed, for the birds being always 



