A YOUNG MARSH HAWK 137 



or disk of white like a china tea-saucer. You could 

 not help saying how pretty, how cunning, like baby 

 hens' eggs, as if the bird was playing at sitting as 

 children play at housekeeping. 



If I had known how crowded her nest was, I 

 should not have dared disturb her, for fear she would 

 break some of them. But not an egg suffered harm 

 by her sudden flight; and no harm came to the nest 

 afterward. Every egg hatched, I was told, and the 

 little chicks, hardly bigger than bumblebees, were 

 led away by the mother into the fields. 



In about a week I paid another visit to the hawk's 

 nest. The eggs were all hatched, and the mother 

 bird was hovering near. I shall never forget the 

 curious expression of those young hawks sitting there 

 on the ground. The expression was not one of 

 youth, but of extreme age. Such an ancient, infirm 

 look as they had, the sharp, dark, and shrunken 

 look about the face and eyes, and their feeble, tot- 

 tering motions ! They sat upon their elbows and the 

 hind part of their bodies, and their pale, withered 

 legs and feet extended before them in the most help- 

 less fashion. Their angular bodies were covered 

 with a pale yellowish down, like that of a chicken; 

 their heads had a plucked, seedy appearance; and 

 their long, strong, naked wings hung down by their 

 sides till they touched the ground: power and fero- 

 city in the first rude draught, shorn of everything 

 but its sinister ugliness. Another curious thing was 

 the gradation of the young in size; they tapered 

 down regularly from the first to the fifth, as if there 



