WASHINGTON EAGLE AND FISH-HAWK. 295 



" The Bird of Washington " and which beside has quite as 

 positive existence as any winged aerial monarch of them all. 

 Though Audubon may have failed in figuring the right sub- 

 ject still the observation of this new variety ay, and its 

 discovery, ever belongs to him, the Eagle-eyed ! He knew 

 his mates, though they were strangers fleeting and swift as 

 broadest wings could make them 1 He may have erred, but 

 then the great Sea Eagle is a bird of mighty scope of wing 

 a continent to him is but a narrow Isthmus of full flight. 

 He drops here and there as at "mine inn" along the zones, 

 and finds new hemispheres to perch ! 



It surely may be reconciled to ordinary coincidences of 

 this class when we have the singular fact that the " Jer 

 Falcon," which is well known as a habitant of the Northern 

 and Polar regions of our Continent, was shot within a few 

 miles of Louisville, Kentucky, a year or two since. I had an 

 opportunity of examining the splendid specimen of this 

 bird, which had been carefully stuffed and mounted, and 

 found it to be much finer than any I had yet seen in the 

 Academies and Museums of the North and East. How came 

 it there ? What storm had been resistless enough to drift its 

 unconquerable wings thus far inland ? It was one of Nature's 

 mysteries. But there it was the veritable Jer Falcon, with 

 its broad breast and swallow-like wings its keen beak and 

 powerful claws ! Some tornado must have caught it in its 

 gusts, and whirled it, dizzied and blind, amidst the huge tur- 

 moil of space away ! away in baffled battling into unfami- 

 liar realms. That the bird was both weary and confounded 

 was evidenced in the fact, that the most vigilant, wary and 

 ferocious of all the falcons could be approached and killed 

 by a boy, with a small fowling-piece, loaded with bird-shot. 



Could the great Cinerious Eagle, shot by Mr. Audubon, 

 have been, too, astray ? At all events, the bird I saw is not 

 identical with Audubon's Bird of Washington, as figured! 

 Of this I am equally certain, as he supposed himself to be in 

 the figuring and identification of the species, and hope to 



