TASTE OF CARNIVOROUS BIRDS. ]43 



bony, but tender, yielding to the touch, and much 

 attenuated. It is therefore apparent that the juices 

 of the stomach are capable of dissolving bone, and 

 that in a short space. I was unwilling to throw 

 aside these bones thus reduced almost to nothing, and 

 therefore, tying them up in a bundle, I gave them 

 again to the eagle, in order to see whether they would 

 be entirely dissolved, or, like a caput mortuum, retain 

 their membranous appearance ; but, being appre- 

 hensive that this could not be so well ascertained if 

 they were naked in the stomach, I enclosed them in 

 a tube. It was retained thirteen hours, and upon 

 examination was entirely empty ; it was therefore 

 reasonable to infer that the gastric fluid had now 

 completed the solution. The readiness with which 

 these bones, of a texture by no means tender, were 

 digested, led me to suppose that the hardest would 

 not resist the action of the gastric liquor. To deter- 

 mine this, I began by giving the eagle a sphere of 

 bone, worked at the lathe out of an ox's thigh-bone, 

 of the same diameter as that which had been used 

 for the falcon, and taken from the same individual. 

 Upon that occasion I observed that the falcon did 

 not dissolve it during the long space of thirty-five 

 days and seven hours. In the present case it was 

 every day cast up and immediately returned, and in 

 twenty- five days and nine hours it was completely 

 digested. The eagle is then capable not only of 

 digesting the hardest bones, but of digesting them in 

 a shorter space than some other birds of prey*." 



In a wild state, as in confinement, it is probable that 

 eagles always prefer living prey to carrion, though they 

 may, when pressed by hunger, frequently have re- 

 course to such fare. It is in this way we must ac- 

 count for what is related of these birds by eastern 

 travellers, supposing them to be correct in the species; 

 * Dissertations, i. 187. 



