GENERAL CHARACTERS. 85 



ours, and we may do with the wild creatures as we deem 

 best. But we should not play the tyrant with that which is 

 not ours. If we can show that it will be useful for us 

 to destroy the kite in the wild moor which we neglect, and 

 the eagle in the mountain ravine, which we can neither stock 

 nor cultivate, then we may plead our privilege as lords of the 

 nether world and slaughter them ; but if we cannot, we are 

 interfering with, and most probably marring, that which we 

 do not understand, acting much in the same manner as the 

 owner of an estate, who should cut down the forests, when 

 he could neither use nor sell the timber, nor yet cultivate 

 any other crop on the land which it occupied. 



The birds of prey are not merely a part of the system of 

 nature, but one of the most interesting parts of it ; and there 

 are no birds, the haunts or the habits of which are more 

 calculated to impart information and afford pleasure. In 

 strength, in swiftness, in bold daring, in patient endurance, 

 in attachment to each other and to their young, and in the 

 utmost perfection of observing power and muscular strength, 

 there are no birds equal to the birds of prey. Drive the 

 eagle from the mountain, and half its sublimity would be 

 gone ; chase the owl from the ivied ruin or the hollow tree, 

 and half its fascinations, even to the unobservant rustics, 

 would be destroyed. 



GENERAL CHARACTERS AND DIVISIONS OF THE BIRDS OF 

 PREY. 



The characters in which all rapacious birds agree, and by 

 which, if any one is well known, all others may be deter- 

 mined, are peculiar and striking. The bill is short, strong, 

 rather compressed at the sides, often bending for its whole 

 length, and hooked at the extremity of the upper mandible. 

 The limbs very strong and muscular, with the toes, three 

 before and one behind, free, or only partially united by 



