210 © THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
except the length of its legs. It appears, however, to be 
now almost universally admitted that its closest affinity 
is with the Vultures, with which it agrees in the most 
essential particulars of its organization, and from which 
it differs chiefly in certain external characters alone, 
which unquestionably give to it an aspect exceedingly 
distinct, but are not of themselves of sufficient import- 
ance to authorize its removal to a distant part of the 
classification. It constitutes in fact one of those mixed 
and aberrant forms by means of which the arbitrary 
divisions of natural objects established by man are so 
frequently assimilated to each other in the most beau- 
tiful, and occasionally in the most unexpected, manner. 
The principal generic characters of the Secretary con- 
sist in the form of his beak, which is shorter than the 
head, thick, and curved nearly from the very base, where 
it is covered with a cere; in the long and unequal 
feathers which take their origin from the back of his 
head, and are susceptible of elevation and depression ; 
in the naked skin which surrounds his eye, and which is 
shaded by a series of hairs in the form of an eyebrow ; 
in the great length and slenderness of his tarsi, which 
form his most striking characteristic in an Order remark- 
able for a structure exactly the reverse; and in the 
shortness of his toes, which are terminated by blunted 
talons of little comparative size or curvature. The only 
known species measures upwards of three feet in length. 
Its plumage, when in a perfect state, is for the most part 
of a bluish gray, with a shade of reddish brown on the 
wings, the large quill-feathers of which are black. The 
throat and breast are nearly white, and the rest of the 
under surface of the body offers a mixture of black, red, 
