BIRDS OF PREY. 165 



they hoot him; they give him chase; profiting by his embarrassment, 

 they persecute him to death. 



There is no form of association by which they do not know how 

 to profit. That which is sweetest the family does not induce them 

 to forget, as you may see, the confederacy for defence or the league 

 for attack. On the contrary, they associate themselves even with 

 their superior rivals, the vultures, and call, precede, or follow them, 

 to feed at their expense. They unite and this is a stronger illustra- 

 tion with their enemy the eagle; at least, they surround him to 

 profit by his combats, by the fray in which he triumphs over some 

 great animal. These shrewd spectators wait at a little distance until 

 the eagle has feasted to his satisfaction, and gorged himself with 

 blood; when this takes place, he flies away, and the remainder falls 

 to the crows. 



Their evident superiority over so great a number of birds is due 

 to their longevity and to the experience which their excellent memoiy 

 enables them to acquire and profit by. Very different to the majority 

 of animals, whose duration of life is proportionable to the duration of 

 their infancy, they reach maturity at the end of a year, and live, it is 

 said, a century 



The great variety of their food, which includes every kind of 

 animal or vegetable nutriment, every dead or living prey, gives them 

 a wide acquaintance with things and seasons, harvests and hunts. 

 They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything. The 

 ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with 

 nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things 

 where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so 

 prudent and sage a bird. 



With due submission to the noble Raptores, the crow, which 

 frequently guides them, despite his "inky suit" and uncouth visage, 

 despite the coarseness of appetite imputed to him, is not the less the 

 superior genius of the great species of which he is, in size, already a 

 diminution. 



But the crow, after all, represents only utilitarian prudence, the 



