LIFE OP WILSON. cxxxi 



energy of his character, which is fierce, contemplative, daring and tyrannical : 

 attributes not exerted but on particular occasions; but, when put forth, over- 

 powering all opposition. Elevated upon a high dead limb of some gigantic 

 tree, that commands a wide view of the neighboring shore and ocean, he seems 

 calmly to contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue 

 their busy avocations below: the snow-white Gulls slowly winnowing the air; 

 the busy Tringse coursing along the sands ; trains of Ducks streaming over the 

 surface; silent and watchful Cranes, intent and wading; clamorous Crows, and 

 all the winged multitudes that subsist by the bounty of this vast liquid maga- 

 zine of nature. High over all these hovers one, whose action instantly arrests 

 all his attention. By his wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in 

 air, he knows him to be the Fish-hawk settling over some devoted victim of 

 the deep. His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing himself, with half- 

 opened wings, on the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow 

 from heaven, descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings 

 reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam around. 

 At this moment the looks of the Eagle are all ardor; and levelling his neck 

 for flight, he sees the Fish-hawk emerge, struggling with his prey, and mount- 

 ing into the air with screams of exultation. These are the signal for our hero, 

 who, launching into the air, instantly gives chase, soon gains on the Fish- 

 hawk, each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these 

 rencontres the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencumbered 

 Eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when 

 with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, the latter 

 drops his fish ; the Eagle poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more 

 certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches 

 the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods." 



Perhaps there is no similar work extant which can so justly lay claim to the 

 merit of originality as Wilson's Ornithology. In books on natural history, in 

 general, we rarely meet with much that is new ; and it is not unusual to behold 

 labored performances, which are undistinguished by any fact, which might 

 prove that their authors are entitled to any other praise than that of diligent 

 compilers. But in the work before us, we are presented with a fund of in- 

 formation of so uncommon a kind, so various, and so interesting, that we are 

 at no loss to perceive that the whole is the result of personal application, 

 directed to the only legitimate source of knowledge — Nature, not as she ap- 

 pears in the cabinet of the collector, but as she reveals herself in all the grace 

 and loveliness of animated existence. 



Independent of those pleasing descriptions, which will always insure the 

 work a favorable reception, it has higher claims to our regard, by the philo- 

 sophical view which it takes of those birds which mankind had, with one con- 

 sent, proscribed as noxious, but which now we are induced to consider as aux- 

 iliaries in agriculture, whose labors could not be dispensed with without detri- 

 ment. A vagrant chicken, now and then, may well be spared to the hawk or 

 owl who clears our fields of swarms of destructive mice; the woodpecker, 

 whose taste induces him to appropriate to himself the first ripe apple or cherry, 

 has well earned the delicacy, by the myriads of pestilential worms of which he 



