240 THE EAGLE. 



whose possessions they but seldom make their depredations, 

 being contented rather to follow the wild game in the forest, 

 than to risk their safety to satisfy their hanger. 



This fierce animal may be considered among birds as the 

 lion among quadrupeds ; and in many respects they have a 

 strong similitude to each other. They are both possessed of 

 force, and an empire over their fellows of the forest. Equally 

 magnanimous, they disdain smaller plunder ; and only pur- 

 sue animals worthy the conquest. It is not till after having 

 been long provoked, by the cries of the rook or the magpie, 

 that this generous bird thinks fit to punish them Avith death : 

 the Eagle also disdains to share the plunder of another bird ; 

 and will take up with no other prey but that which he has 

 acquired by his own pursuits. How hungry soever he may 

 be, he never stoops to carrion ; and when satiated, he never 

 returns to the same carcass, but leaves it for other animals, 

 more rapacious and less delicate than he. Solitary, like the 

 lion, he keeps the desert to himself alone ; it is as extraordi- 

 nary to see two pair of Eagles in the same mountain, as two 

 lions in the same forest. They keep separate, to find a more 

 ample supply ; and consider the quantity of their game as 

 the best proof of their dominion. Nor does the similitude of 

 these animals stop here : they have both sparkling eyes, and 

 nearly of the same color ; their claws are of the same form, 

 their breath equally strong, and their cry equally loud and 

 terrifying. Both bred for war, they are enemies of all society : 

 alike fierce, proud, and incapable of being easily tamed. It 

 requires great patience and much art to tame an Eagle ; and 

 even though taken young, and brought under by long assid- 

 uity, yet still it is a dangerous domestic, and often turns its 

 force against its master. When brought into the field for the 

 purposes of fowling, the falconer is never sure of its attach- 

 ment : that innate pride, and love of liberty, still prompt it to 

 regain its native solitudes ; and the moment the falconer sees 

 it, when let loose, first stoop towards the ground, and then 

 rise perpendicularly into the clouds, he gives up all his former 

 labor for lost ; quite sure of never beholding his late prisoner 



