234 CLASS AVES. 



race. If the stories told of it be true, the benefits of nature 

 seem, in this way, to be pretty equally distributed to both 

 worlds. While the old can boast of the most terrible of 

 quadrupeds, the fiercest and strongest of birds has fallen to 

 the inheritance of the new. Travellers have assured Mauduyt, 

 that the harpy makes its usual prey on the ai and the unau, 

 and that it often carries off fawns and other young quadrupeds. 

 It also attacks the aras, and the larger parrots. 



It does not appear very clearly, why this eagle should come 

 under the section of the fisher-eagles, a denomination to which, 

 in many cases, we must not attach much importance, and which 

 is generally applied to those eagles whose thick and short 

 tarsi are altogether or in part naked. The places inhabited 

 by the harpy, and all we know concerning its mode of life, is 

 confirmatory of this observation. Sonnini is persuaded that 

 this bird does not fish, and describes, under the appellation of 

 the great eagle of Guiana, an individual whose size exceeds 

 the usual magnitude of the harpy or destructive eagle. There 

 is every probability of the identity of species in this case, and 

 the individual in question may be the female of the harpy, 

 on the sexual differences of which no well-authenticated 

 observations seem hitherto to have been made. Sonnini has 

 measured and described the individual which he killed, and 

 the only material difference between it and the destructor con- 

 sists in relative size. It also frequents the hot and humid 

 countries of America. But we cannot expect for a very long 

 time to gain any precise notions respecting a bird whose 

 solitary abode, in the depth of almost impenetrable forests, is 

 so far removed from the habitations of man. 



It is not our object to spin out our observations by extending 

 them to all the species, or even by dwelling much on several 

 of the subdivisions of this order. Where nothing interesting 

 in structure or habits is known concerning them, we shall pass 

 them over in silence here. The text, with its additions, it is 

 hoped, will amply answer the purposes of those who delight to 



