98 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



currino^ in the mass to the maintenance of that due 

 equihbrium in the system of the universe on which its 

 continued existence mainly depends. 



The Vultures and the Eagles furnish a striking- 

 instance of the extent to which this prejudice has 

 been carried. The latter, eminently qualified by their 

 organization for seizing and carrying off a living prey, 

 serve a useful purpose of nature by setting bounds to 

 the multiplication of the smaller species both of qua- 

 drupeds and birds, which might otherwise become too 

 numerous for the earth to support : while the former, 

 disqualified by certain modifications in their structure 

 for the performance of a similar task, are no less use- 

 fully employed in removing the putrefying carrion which 

 but for them would infect the atmosphere with its 

 unwholesome exhalations. Thus both are of equal 

 importance in the economy of nature ; and both are 

 stimulated to the performance of the particular service 

 for which they were created, by the impulse of that 

 instinct which is the immediate result of their organic 

 structure. Instead, however, of regarding them as alike 

 the ministers of nature in the maintenance of her laws, 

 man has chosen to fix upon the one a character for 

 bravery and generosity, and to brand the other with 

 the epithets of base, cowardly, and obscene. The Vul- 

 tures, which are perhaps the most useful and certainly 

 the most inoffensive, have thus been consigned to per- 

 petual infamy ; while the Eagles, in the true cant of 

 that military romance which has ever borne so great a 

 sway over the passions of mankind, have been exalted, 

 in common with the warrior that desolates the world, 

 into objects of admiration, and selected as the types 

 and emblems of martial glory. 



From these fanciful associations we turn to the 

 realities of nature, and proceed to indicate the cliaiac- 



