163 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



The vultiire was as ill at ease in this stony prison as 

 the eaglej but his annoyance was of another kind ; the 

 want that preyed upon his ignoble mind was not want of 

 air^ lightj and liberty, but want of an indefinite supply 

 of victuals ; he seemed to our eye to be following in ab- 

 stract reverie the course of some Egyptian caravan, or to 

 be feeding his fancy a second time in prowling amongst 

 the ruins of some well-sacked city, or to be reconsider- 

 ing wistfully those larger supplies of the bounteous bat- 

 tle-field, which have filled the maw of his race from the 

 days of ' manslaying Hector,' ' the Macedonian madman 

 and the Swede,' to those of the Corsican despot and his 

 marshals ; when, whatever might be the fate of the eagle, 

 the vulture's portion of the prey was assured from the 

 first charge. His luxurious ancestors, avBpo<f)d6pov 

 /Se/Spwre? at/iaTo? Xiiro';, had fattened on foie gras en- 

 tertainments of Prometheus liver, &, la Perigord, and 

 had beaked and clawed at pleasure the whole splanch- 

 nology of the giant Tityus, whose body covered many 

 roods of pasture-ground, and was their exclusive perqid- 

 site; how then could these their restricted and coerced 

 descendants, fed upon the sorry gaol-bird's allowance 

 of only two rotole of buffalo per day, and that at 

 fixed hours, with no intermediate lunch or goute to 

 beguile the weary time, be expected or be able to look 

 cheerful, or to stomach such a yS/o? d/S/oro? as this? 

 They continued accordingly staring moodily ahead, and 

 disdaining to take any notice of what was passing, till 

 the raw meat touching their contumelious beaks, each 

 bird seized it with a clutch, and tore it sullenly and 

 slowly to pieces, ' unguibus et rostro tardus trahit ilia 

 vultiu',' as Ovid wrote many centuries ago, after seeing 

 one dine. 



But neither these incarcerated solitaires, nor the gulls 

 and other aquatic birds which peered and peeped out 

 from among the crevices of the rocks, or floated about 



