THE HARPY EAGLE. 265 



rest of the accipitrine tribe. He states also that it 

 is quarrelsome, sullen, and fierce, and preys not merely 

 upon birds, but upon hares and other similar animals. 

 Linnaeus adds to this account, probably on the report 

 of the keepers of the Spanish Menagerie, that it is 

 capable of splitting a man's skull with a single blow of 

 its beak. Mauduyt states that he had been informed 

 by travellei's that it commonly feeds upon the two spe- 

 cies of sloth which are found in the forests of Guiana, 

 and carries off in its talons fawns and other young 

 quadrupeds. These details are confirmed by Sonnini, 

 who describes it as living perfectly solitary in the depth 

 and darkness of the thickest forests, where of course it 

 is seldom disturbed by the prying eye of curiosity. He 

 himself observed it perched on a lofty tree on the banks 

 of the Orapu, where it seemed altogether motionless, 

 and uttered no cry. His shot having only broken its 

 wing, he fastened it by one leg to his boat, in which 

 position it remained for several days, displaying no 

 symptoms of mischievousness, but constantly refusing 

 all kinds of food. This was the specimen called by him 

 Aigle Destructeur. Of the Grand Aigle de la Guiane 

 he met with only three individuals in the course of his 

 journeys in the interior, and was the first to make them 

 known in the colony, where they had never been seen 

 before. 



These scattered notices comprise all that is known of 

 its history in a state of nature. In captivity there is 

 little to distinguish its manners from those of the other 

 birds of its tribe. An individual taken from the nest, 

 in the possession of the elder Jacquin, became so tame 

 as to suffer its head to be handled and scratched ; but 

 unfortunately this specimen was found dead on its pas- 

 sage to Europe, having fallen a victim, as was supposed, 

 to the vengeance of the sailors, whose monkeys it had 



