324 THE MOUNTAIN. 



northern range, and is very abundant in the winter at the 

 South. He is frequently seen on the tall pines along 

 water-courses, watching for frogs and small animals. Color, 

 "brown, beneath white, tail red, with bands." "An abund- 

 ant and very difficult species to the student." Cas. 



CIRCUS Hudsonius, (Linn.) Hen-harrier. This bird has 

 a far northern range, traveling from Hudson's Bay to the 

 southern part of the United States. Its prey consists of 

 frogs, lizards, and small birds. Color, " bluish-gray, female 

 brown ;" length, twenty inches. It is sometimes seen along 

 the streams and marshy places of the mountain. 



Many of these rapacious birds are fine noble-looking crea- 

 tures, but the imagination in endowing them with magnani- 

 mous qualities, or estimable characters, commits a blunder 

 unwarrantable by a critical study of their true natures. An 

 accomplished observer of the bird world, and withal a re- 

 flecting and philosophical naturalist, with an eye to the law 

 and spirit which speaks the meaning of the deep soul under- 

 lying the outward phenomenal, remarks, " It is, however, 

 entirely erroneous to attribute a noble or generous character 

 to any of the predatory animals, though from an early period 

 of history several species have been so regarded. On the 

 contrary, there is, in all these classes, whether of birds or of 

 other animals, a marked absence of the very traits which are 

 in some measure assigned to them, and even more unmis- 

 takably so in some of the more celebrated, as the eagles and 

 lions, than in the more humble species. They appear to 

 personate a principle, if we may be allowed to use the ex- 

 pression, involving one of the most momentous and mys- 

 terious of problems, the existence of evil in the world. The 

 prowling and treacherous lion, and the robber wolf, have 

 unfortunately but too strong analogies in that race which is 

 the head of the visible creation, and they and their kind 

 everywhere present the same intrinsic meanness which is 

 characteristic of violence and injustice, of vice and of crime 

 among men." Cassin, Birds of America, p. 159. 



