ORDER ACCIPITRES. 207 



also remarkable that the smaller species are the most instanta- 

 neously destructive ; the merlins scarcely touch the place just 

 mentioned before immediate death ensues. 



The sailers do not strike with so much precision ; their grand 

 resource is to seize their victim and compress it to death. 

 When they cast themselves upon a hare, they seize it by the 

 neck with, one of their talons, and strangle it. Their beak, not 

 being indented, tears the skin and flesh, but seldom breaks the 

 bones, except when they are so situated that its point can 

 manage them in its curvature. In the thickest woods these 

 birds exhibit extraordinar}' address in seizing their prey ; and 

 probably the length of the tarsi may prove of considerable 

 utility to them on such occasions. 



The rapacious birds of elevated flight perceive, the moment 

 their hood is removed, not only the various birds which are, as 

 it were, immersed in the luminous expanse of air, but also their 

 peculiar kinds, and their natural disposition and means of de- 

 fence. Accordingly, they instantly select the object of their 

 pursuit, against which they steadily proceed, without being in 

 the slightest degree distracted by the motions of any other birds 

 which may happen to be about it. The low-flying birds also, 

 Avhen they quit their master's hand, fix their quarry with un- 

 erring eye, in the darkest obscurity of the forest, either am.ong 

 the birds which circle with such rapidity through the thick 

 coverts, or the smaller mammalia whose almost imperceptible 

 motions would elude a duller ken. 



Among the particular resources which the birds of prey de- 

 rive from the varieties of their conformation, M. Huber does 

 not take the tail into consideration. This part, in fact, does 

 not, as the ancients imagined, serve for a rudder to the bird, to 

 enable it to turn itself to one side or the other, but simply as an 

 assistance in ascending or descending. Even Borelli has long 

 since remarked, that individuals accidentally deprived of their 

 tails, performed all the movements to which this part had been 



