82 BALD EAGLE, 
“Let us compare with this magnificent description the 
most elegant pages of Buffon, and the difference will be 
seen between the sedentary and the field naturalist. We 
are far from being so ungrateful or so bold as to wish 
to weaken the admiration due to that immortal writer, 
who must be ever remembered with pride by France 
among its scientific and literary glories. In invitmg our 
readers to study comparatively the style of two such 
eminent men, we only wish to make them feel how many 
advantages a simple and exact mind, which has studied 
from Nature, has over the most brilliant genius which 
has only made its observations in a menagerie or a 
garden. ‘The passionate love of Natural History is the 
only secret of the descriptive talent of Audubon, and 
the attentive observation of facts has sufficed to give to 
the pictures he has drawn a warmth of colourmg which 
the most clever writer cannot find among the dust of — 
his cabinet.” 
I shall, I am sure, be excused this digression, con- 
taining, as it does, so just a tribute to the celebrated 
American ornithologist. 
M. Mouat gives the following description of Audubon’s 
first discovery of what he then thought a new species, 
but which, according to Prince C. Bonaparte, is the 
one I am now describing. I transcribe M. Mouat’s 
account of this discovery :— 
“Audubon describes under the name of Washington’s 
Eagle a species of Fishing Eagle, which Prince C. 
Bonaparte re-unites to the Falco leucocephalus. The 
American ornithologist observed it for the first time in 
1814, and felt, he said, happier in finding this new 
species than Herschel did in discovering his planet. It 
was in the month of February Audubon was ascending 
the Mississippi. ‘The glacial north wind surrounded him, 
q 
. 
a 
