THE COMBAT. 
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Ay 
world uninhabitable by man, is continued throughout 
the earth. Quadrupeds, and even man, take in it 
but a feeble part. It is ever the war of the winged 
Hercules. 
To him, indeed, inhabited regions owe all their 
security. In the furthest Africa, at the Cape, the 
good serpent-eater defends man against the reptiles. 
Peaceable in disposition and gentle in aspect, he seems 
to engage without passion in his dangerous encounters. 
The gigantic yabiru does not labour less in the 
deserts of Guiana, where man as yet ventures not 
to live. Their perilous savannahs, alternately inun- 
dated and parched, a dubious ocean teeming in the 
sunshine with a horrible population of monsters as 
yet unknown, possess, as their superior inhabitant, 
their intrepid scavenger, a noble bird of battle, 
retaining some relics of the ancient weapons with 
which the primeval birds were very probably pro- 
vided in their struggle against the dragon. These are 
a horn on the head, and a spur on each of the wings. 
With the first it stirs up, excites, and rouses out of the mud its 
enemy. The others serve as a guard and defence: the reptile 
