CLASS II. AVES: ORDER 1. RAPTORES. 39 



weiglit, from an elevation of fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, would be powerful ; but the 

 eagle shoots down with a great initial velocity, and as she delivers the whole of her momentum 

 with the claw, she not only dashes the anim'^1 to the earth, but plunges the claw into its body up 

 to the toe, dislocating the spine or breaking the skull of the feebler quadrupeds, and therefore 

 usually inflicting instant death. 



Stern and unsocial in their character, yet confident in their strength and efticient means of de- 

 fense, the eagles delight to dwell in the solitude of inaccessible rocks, on whose summits they 

 build their rude nest and sit in lone majesty, while with their keen and piercing eye they sweep 

 J::e plains below, even to the horizon. The combined extent and minuteness of their vision, 

 often including not merely towns, villages, and districts, but countries and even kingdoms in its 

 vast circuit, at the same time carefully piercing the depths of forests, the mazes of swamps, and 

 the intricacies of lawns and meadows, so as to discover every moving object — even the sly and 

 stealthy animals that constitute their prey — form a power of sight to which human experience 

 makes no approach. If we connect with this amazing gift of vision the power of flight which en- 

 ables these birds to shoot through the heavens so as to pass from one zone to another in a single 

 day and at a single flight, we shall readily comprehend how it is that they have in all ages so 

 impressed the popular imagination as to render them the standing types and emblems of power. 



In ancient times the lion was the representative of kings, but the e-agle, soaring in the sky, was 

 made the companion of the gods, and the constant associate of Jupiter himself. In ignorance of 

 the true qualities of these animals, courage and magnanimity, daring and dignity, were regarded 

 as their attributes, and thus they were deemed fitting representatives of the noblest and most ex- 

 alted of both gods and men. We now know that both the eagle and the lion are butchers, glut- 

 tons, and cowards, but such is our inherent admiration of power, that, inasmuch as they are the 

 most destructive of animals, their names are still associated in our minds with something of re- 

 spect and admiration. The ass is meek, patient, useful, intelligent, but his name, applied to a 

 man, is the most insulting of epithets ; the goose is gentle, inoftensive, and one of the very wisest 

 of the feathered creation, but it furnishes the popular mind and tongue with a term significant of 

 something bordering on idiocy. Who so base as not to spuru these degrading terms i Who so 

 sage as not to be flattered by the title of lion or eagle ? 



And after all something may be said in mitigation of even the general charge of destructive- 

 ness brought against these prominent members of the carnivorous tribes. The common idea is, 

 "that they are constantly engaged in the work of death and destruction ; that the lion in the des- 

 ert is forever roaring and rending; and that the mountain air can never rest for the wing of the 

 eagle ; that her shadow is a constant ensign of dread, and her cry a never-ceasing sound of fear. 

 This is the general notion, but nothing can be wider from the fact, and nothing would be more 

 in opposition to the whole tenor of nature's economy. It is the small powers and the feeble ex- 

 ertions in nature that are never at rest. Those creeping currents of air which we can hardly call 

 breezes, and which tell only upon the leaves of the aspen, are never at rest ; but storms are not 

 frequent, and a hurricane, even in what may be called hurricane countries, is an event of compara- 

 tively rare occurrence. And it is so among birds. The gentle sparrow is always catching cater- 

 pillars, and devours fifty in a day, while the golden eagle does not feed once a day — nay, on the 

 average not oftener than once a week. Even when eagles are on the hunt, they do not occasion 

 nmch general alarm to those animals upon which they prey. The eagle, when towering in her 

 pride of place, certainly commands in vision, and can command in power of destruction, a very 

 wide horizon; but still her command, even at this time, is one of peace and general safety; and 

 as hawks and buzzards and harriers, which are really for more destructive than eagles, are not 

 very fond of beating the bushes if there is an eagle above them in the sky, it is doubtful whether, 

 upon the whole, the golden eagle may not partake more of the character of a preserver than of 

 that of a destroyer. Even when she has singled out her prey, and is about to stoop at it, the 

 fluttering wings, as she winds herself up to the bent of her power, and the loud note with which 

 she begins her descent, all tend to warn the rest of the animals, so that they lie close ; the eagle 

 devours the prey in silence, and she does not stoop again on the same ground during the same 

 day." 



