258 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



lated ; and the talons are excessively powerful, the 

 internal and the posterior in particular attaining an 

 almost disproportionate length. In some of these cha- 

 racters, as for instance the nakedness of the legs, the 

 Harpy approaches the Sea-Eagles ; but it differs from 

 them in many essential points, and in none more re- 

 markably than in the shortness of its wings, and the 

 robustness of its legs and talons ; the former character 

 rendering it, like the short-winged Hawks, more adapted 

 for preying near the surface of the ground on gallina- 

 ceous birds and on quadrupeds, and the latter enabling 

 it to carry off a prey of much greater magnitude to its 

 solitary retreat. 



It is difficult, in the present state of our knowledge 

 with respect to the short-winged Eagles of South Ame- 

 rica, to determine how many of them belong to this 

 striking group, to which the generic name of Harpyia 

 has been given by M. Cuvier. With the genus subse- 

 quently proposed by M. Spix under the same name, the 

 Harpy Eagle has little in common : its strongly marked 

 characters preclude the possibility of its being for a 

 moment confounded with the birds described by him 

 as Harpies, which are as much inferior in size as they 

 are comparatively deficient in power of beak and talons, 

 and have moreover their far weaker tarsi totally covered 

 with feathers. The bird before us is the only one that 

 we can with certainty refer to the Harpyia of M. Cuvier, 

 for the Crowned Eagle of D'Azara, and one or two 

 other species doubtfully mentioned by M. Vieillot, are 

 yet too imperfectly known to admit of their being 

 definitively placed. It is better therefore to restrict it 

 for the present to the one species which forms its type, 

 and which has now become familiar to British zoolo- 

 gists through the specimen exhibited in the Garden 

 of the Society. So imperfect have been most of the 



