OUR NATIONAL BIRD. 



Arthur F. Rice. 



The public has been calld on to 

 express its opinion as to what 

 should be considered our national 

 flower, and after a full discussion of the 

 subject, there is little doubt that the final 

 decision will meet with general approval. 



Unfortunately, the people at large 

 have never been consulted in the choice 

 of a national bird, and while the eagle 

 is tacitly admitted to be such, it may 

 not be presumptuous to question the 

 wisdom of the selection or to dispute 

 the right of the eagle to occupy this 

 proud position. 



It is true that the poets have invested 

 this bird with all the rare qualities to be 

 found in the feathered creation, and at- 

 tributed to it characteristics which 

 naturalists have never been able to dis- 

 cover. They have drawn on their 

 imaginations to the extent of making 

 the eagle the symbol of literature, 

 art, science, valor, liberty, pride and 

 power. In their fantastic nomenclature 

 he is known as " the monarch bird," 

 "the lord of light," "the feathered 

 king," "the playmate of the storm ; " 

 he is "imperial," "princely," "royal," 

 "thunder-grasping," etc., etc. All this 

 sounds well, but is somewhat overdrawn, 

 and those who are best acquainted with 

 the bird and his habits, are content to 

 use less flowery titles and more humble 

 adjectives. At the risk of shattering a 

 popular ideal, truth compels me to say 

 that the eagle has received from those 

 closet-naturalists something more than 

 his due. It is not a fact that his powers 

 of flight and vision exceed those of all 

 other birds, for the vulture excels him 

 in the one and the condor in the other ; 

 yet both of these birds are in bad odor 

 with the poets and are called hard 

 names by them. Neither is he braver 

 than many other birds, and much 

 smaller ones that himself, at that. The 

 king bird chases him and some of the 

 tiny songsters do not hesitate to peck 

 and hawk at him. He is an arrant 

 coward when crows are about and makes 

 haste to escape from these sable ene- 

 mies. 



The poets have displayed their igno- 

 rance by picturing the eagle as a follower 

 of armies, scenting the carnage from 

 afar ; as though he fed on dead 

 bodies, which he never does. No less a 

 poet than Shelly, in speaking of the 

 vegetation on a mountain top, mentions 

 "the feathery weed sown by some eagle 

 on the topmost stone ;" a performance 

 which would be something out of the 

 usual line for a carnivorous bird ! Still 

 another speaks of " the fair tree on which 

 the eagle builds." Now, as a matter of 

 fact, most eagles build in the rocks, and 

 those that do nest in trees, select 

 some old dead stub or lightning-stricken 

 trunk that is anything but fair to look 

 on. 



If then, we cannot believe what the 

 poets say of our so-called national bird, 

 and inasmuch as the progress of civil- 

 ization has made him a " rara avis," 

 which we can seldom get sight of ; 

 where shall we look for a correct deline- 

 ation of him ? Practical people will 

 probably refer us to the coins from our 

 mints, for is not the bird of freedom 

 stamped thereon in all his glory of wing 

 pinions and tail feathers ? Taking it for 

 granted that the effigy of the eagle is 

 on the gold coins — which always seem 

 to be in some other pockets than our 

 own, and are therefore inaccessible — let 

 us examine the silver coins and see what 

 we find thereon. Something is certainly 

 there which was intended for a bird, and 

 we will admit, for the sake of argument, 

 that it is an eagle, although it looks 

 more like a pterodactyl. It bears about 

 the same resemblance to a live eagle as 

 the king of clubs to a live king. Its 

 head looks more like that of a tapir, or 

 a rhinoceros without a horn, than of an 

 eagle, and it wears a peculiar sort of 

 pantalets entirely unknown to natural 

 history. The best that can be said of it 

 is that it looks like a disreputable fish 

 hawk with a swelled head, and was 

 probably engraved by a man who had 

 just returned intoxicated from a cock- 

 fight, bringing with him some mixed im- 

 pressions of the noble birds he had 



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