TASTE OF CARNIVOROUS BIRDS. 145 



animal food, which they capture, kill, and devour; 

 abstaining, unless stimulated by necessity, from crea- 

 tures they may find dead." " The raven and the 

 crow likewise eat animal food, but it is generally such 

 as has been killed by violence or ceased to exist, only 

 in cases of want killing it for themselves. The crow, 

 in the spring, when food is difficult of attainment, 

 will kill young pigeons ; and the magpie, having 

 young ones, captures the new hatches of our domestic 

 poultry*." 



Now although both the structure of the birds, and 

 their more usual habits, certainly accord in some 

 measure with the original remark of Aristotle, we 

 must take the whole with considerable limitation, 

 if we keep to facts proved by observation. The 

 circumstance of eagles, while in confinement, pre- 

 ferring living prey to carrion, proved by every one 

 who has kept the birds, seems to us of much less 

 force than the facts derived from observing the 

 birds in a wild state. " Notwithstanding/' says 

 M. Vaillant, " all which poets and historians and the 

 authors who have copied them have written, I have 

 verified the observation so frequently, as authorizes 

 me to maintain and repeat it to be false, that eagles, 

 even when pressed by hunger, never pounce upon 

 carrion f." Wilson is no less explicit. 



" Were we disposed," he says, " after the manner 

 of some, to substitute for plain matter of fact all the 

 narratives, conjectures, and fanciful theories of tra- 

 vellers, voyagers, compilers, &c. relative to the history 

 of the eagle, the volumes of these writers, from Aris- 

 totle down to his admirer the Count de Buffon, 

 would furnish abundant materials for this purpose. 

 But the author of the present work feels no ambition 



* Journ. of a Naturalist, p. 244, 3d edit. 

 f Oiseaux d'Afrique, i. 8. 



