1878. The Home of the Harpy-Eagle. I51 
7 S 5 
his brother. The colly, who looked as if he had encountered a 
pack of wolves, managed to limp off, but on his way home dropped 
by the roadside, exsanguis, and a post-mortem examination showed 
that he had bled to death from a deep gash in his throat, that 
one of his eyes had been torn out, and that in the fight of ten 
minutes the bones of his skull and breast had been laid open in 
as many different places. 
At the return of President Juarez to the Mexican capital in 
1867, the festive bull-fights were supplemented by various side- 
shows, and in the vestibule of the Grand Arena a pugnacious old 
cock-harpy was pitted against a Mexican lynx (Felis onca), which 
had been crippled by a shot through its haunches, but was other- 
wise in good fighting trim and very much inclined to take satis- 
faction out of somebody. The bird was torn to pieces; but the 
mammal did not survive him many minutes, having been literally 
flayed from its shoulders to the tip of its nose. 
Professor Buckley, State Geologist of Texas, told me that he 
shot a harpy in the jungle-delta of the Rio Grande, but failed to 
capture it, though both its wings were broken and the blood 
issuing from its beak gave proof of severe internal injuries. In 
this crippled condition the bird kept the dogs at bay by turning 
on its back and presenting its claws after the manner of a wounded 
cat, shuffling off at the same time by an alternate movement of 
its neck and tail, till it reached the edge of the jungle, into which 
it disappeared before the hunter had reloaded his shot-gun. 
The organ of vitality, which, according to Lavater’s definition, 
inspires a tenacious adherence to life, must occupy a large portion 
of the harpy’s brain, and enable it to survive injuries which would 
terminate the nine lives of the most vigorous tom-cat. No 
Mexican hunter of experience will waste ammunition by a long- 
range shot at a crested eagle, for unless the bullet shatters his 
head or breaks one of his wings, the bird flies off as if nothing 
had happened, though a cloud of feathers flying from his breast 
or abdomen may attest that the shot has not missed altogether. 
A Mexican miner who left the blast furnaces of St. Miguel, 
near Orizaba, before day-break one Sunday morning and de- 
-scended the mountains by a short-cut, surprised a pair of harpies 
on their eyrie, and with a common cudgel knocked down one of 
lem, which, either to scare the intruder or because it was scared 
: of its own wits, flew directly at his head. The bird — 
