a : was —_ enti me a wrong dog that came to the % 
150 The Home of the Harpy-Eagle. [ March, 
and if plucked, yields about four pounds of soft, grayish-white 
down, beside the stiff wing and tail feathers and the bristling tuft 
which crowns its head. This plumage is so elastic, so compact, _ 
and so firmly imbricated that buckshot, striking the wings Of 
and, in spite of its size, steers its way through the labyrinth of 
forest trees and hanging vines with amazing skill, and rarely 
fails to rise with a pheasant, a woodcock or a small mammal in 
- its claws after plunging like a meteor from the clouds into the 
leafy maze of the “erra caliente. 
The full-grown eagle walks in stiff grandezza, with its head 
erect and its crop thrown out, after the manner of strutting 
turkey-cocks, except, if charging an enemy, when he lowers his 
head like a vicious buck, half opens his wings and rushes to the 
encounter with a succession of flopping jumps. The old hen- 
foe without regard to his size, this is probably true, for, at the 
bidding of its master, an English bull-terrier will charge a beagle 
or a bear with equal promptitude, but if we speak of the ability 
to vanquish as well as to assail larger animals the first prize be- 
longs indisputably to the Harpyia destructor. ~ 
The obo volante, or winged wolf, as Quesada translates the old 
Aztec name of the harpy, attacks and kills heavy old turk 
cocks, young fawns, sloths, full-grown foxes and badgers, middl 
sized pigs and even the black Sapayou monkey (AZe/es paniscus 
-whose size and weight exceed its own more than three times. 
The old eagle on the hacienda de Tuxpan engaged, not in 
friendly bout, but in mortal combat, the big shepherd’s dog of 
neighboring farmer who visited the hacienda now and then; 4 
