160 Tue Birps Asout Us. 
CHAPTER VIII. 
BIRDS OF PREY. 
HERE is much in mere bigness, and I am not 
surprised that naturalists, in days gone by, 
looked upon the eagle and the vulture as the very 
highest types of bird-life, and that people generally 
were more impressed with a regal falcon than a timid 
thrush; and in spite of all biological disquisition and 
learned anatomical treatises and evolutionary phi- 
losophy, a bird that outflies all others and preys 
upon others will be held to be the better bird, and so 
prove by what it accomplishes that which the system- 
atist denies concerning him. Certainly on viewing 
bird-life as we ordinarily see it, and particularly so 
in this country, we are more impressed by a hawk 
than a sparrow. Their relative sizes have not all to 
do with this. The hawk asserts himself, thrusts him- 
self upon our notice, and the timid sparrow cowers 
in his presence. We never forget this, and naturally 
in studying the birds about us turn from power to 
weakness, and not from the humble stand-point glance 
upward towards the powerful; and yet the sparrow 
and the thrush have a standing in the bird-world 
that is far more exalted than that of the eagle, falcon, 
or even the huge king vulture. 
We cannot always forget that these birds, except the 
vultures, are murderers, as we call them. We know 
