BIUDS. 63 



method by the consideration of an enormous bird, whose place 

 is not yet ascertained ; as naturalists are in doubt whether to 

 refer it to the eagle tribe, or to that of the vulture. Its great 

 strength, force and vivacity, might plead for its place among the 

 former ; the baldness of its head and nt'clc might be thought to 

 degrade it among the latter. In this uncertainty, it will be enough 

 to describe the bird by the lights we have, and leave future his- 

 torians to settle its rank in the feathered creation. Indeed, if 

 size and strength, combined with rapidity of tlight and rapacity, 

 deserve pre-eminence, no bird can be put in competition with it. 

 The condor possesses, in a higher degree than the eagle, all 

 the qualities that render it formidable, not only to the feathered 

 kind, but to beasts, and even to man himself. Acosta, Garci- 

 lasso, and Desmarchais, assert, that it is eighteen feet across, 

 the wings extended. The beak is so strong as to pierce the 

 body of a cow ; and two of them are able to devour it. They 



'J'lie Great Hai-py is a bird « liidi has been described under various 

 Byiiouyms, in consequence of the variations wliich result from age and 

 sex, in its magnitude and plumage. It is found in Brazil, New Granada, 

 nnd Guyana, where it particularly inhabits the forests of the interior. 

 It is also found in other countries of America, and is peculiar to that con. 

 tinent. It is said to be tlie most robust and powerful of the feathered race. 

 If the stories told of it be true, the benefits of nature seem, in this way, to 

 be pretty equally distributed to both worlds. While the old can boast of 

 the most terrible of qnadinipeds, the fiercest and strongest of birds has fallen 

 to the inheritance of the new. Travellers have assured Mauduyt, that Uie 

 harpy maVies its usual prey on the ai and the unau, and that it often carries 

 off fa «Tis and other young quadrupeds. It also attacks the aras, and the 

 larger parrots. 



It does not appear very clearly, why this eagle should come under the 

 section of the fisher-eagles, a denomination to which, in many cases, we 

 must not attach much importance, and which is generally applied to those 

 eagles whose thick and short tarsi are altogether or in part naked. The 

 places inhabited by the harpy, and all we know concerning its mode of life, 

 is confirmatory of this observation. Sonnini is persuaded that this bird does 

 not fish, and describes, mider the appellation of the great eagle of Guiana, 

 an individual whose size exceeds the usual magnitude of the harpy or de. 

 Btructive eagle. There is every probability of the identity of species in this 

 case, and the individual in question may be the female of the harpy, on the 

 sexual differences of which no well-authenticated observations seem hither, 

 to to have been made. Sonnini has measured and described the individual 

 wliich he killed, and the only material difference between it and the do. 

 structor consists in relative size. It also frequents the hot and humid coun- 

 tries of America. But we cannot expect for a very long time to gain any 

 precise notions respecting a bird whose solitary abode, in the depth of aU 

 most impenetrable forest.s, is so far removed Jcm the habitations of man, 



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