I 52 The Home of the Harpy-Eagte. [March, 
among the boulders, but before it could take wing again, the 
miner put an end to its struggles with a few well-aimed whacks, 
and shouldering his game, resumed „his road towards the valley 
settlements. Half-way down the hill he reached a steep cliffand 
shifted his burden to his left shoulder, to use his right arm to 
better advantage. But at the most critical moment of the danger- 
ous descent he suddenly felt the claws of the eagle at his neck, 
and, in order to save himself, had to drop his stick, which fell 
down the cliffs and into the bed of a mountain torrent. Holding _ 
on to the bird with one hand, he managed to reach the foot of 
the precipice, where he seized the struggling captive by the legs, 
and swinging it up, dashed its head against a rock, till its con- 
vulsions had ceased entirely. His arrival in the village with the 
story of his adventure, created quite a sensation, but when the 
bird was deposited on the ground to be examined at leisure, it : 
revived for the third time, struck its claws through the hand of . 
its captor, struggled to its feet and would have escaped after all, 
if the enraged miner had not flung himself upon it, seized a rock 
and hammered its head to a jelly. 
EA ere 
As soon as the lengthening days of the year approach the ver- 
nal equinox, the hen-harpy begins to collect dry sticks and moss, 
or perhaps only lichens with a few claws’ full of the feathery bast 
of the Arauca palm, if her last year’s eyrie has been left undis- 
turbed. Her favorite roosting places, the highest forest trees, 
especially the Adansonia and the Pinus balsamifera, and the more | 
inaccessible rocks of the foothills, are commonly also chosen for a 
- breeding place, and it is not easy to distinguish her compact-built 
eyrie on the highest branches of a wild fig-tree from the dark- 
colored clusters of the Mexican mistletoe ( Viscum rubrum), which 
frequents the same tree-tops. The eggs are white, with yellow- _ 
ish brown dots and washes, and about as long, though not quite 
_ with the contents of the remaining eggs. The process of incuba- 
tion is generally finished by the middle of March, if not sooner; 
and from that time to the end of June the rapacity of the old 
birds is the terror of the tropical fauna, for their hunting expedi- 
tions which later in the year are restricted to the early morning 
_ hours, oe: occupy them for the larger part of the day. 
