WASHINGTON EAGLE AND FISH-HAWK. 
295 
" The Bird of Washington " — and wliicli beside has quite as 
positive existence as any winged aerial monarch of them alL 
Though Audubon may have failed in figuring the right sub- 
ject — still the observation of this new variety — ay, and its 
discovery, ever belongs to him, the Eagle-eyed ! He knew 
his mates, though they were strangers fleeting and swift as 
broadest wings could make them ! He may have erred, but 
then the great Sea Eagle is a bird of mighty scope of wing — 
a continent to him is but a narrow Isthmus of full flight. 
He drops here and there as at mine inn " along the zones, 
and finds new hemispheres to perch ! 
It surely may be reconciled to ordinary coincidences of 
this cla^s when we have the singular fact that the " Jer 
Falcon," which is well known as a habitant of the Northern 
and Polar regions of our Continent, was shot within a few 
miles of Louisville. Kentucky, a year or two since. I had an 
opportunity of examining the splendid specimen of this 
bird, which had been carefully stuffed and mounted, and 
found it to be much finer than any I had yet seen in the 
Academies and Museums of the N'orth and East. How came 
it there ? What storm had been resistless enough to drift its 
unconquerable wings thus far inland ? It was one of Nature's 
mysteries. But there it was — the veritable Jer Falcon^ with 
its broad breast and swallow-like wings — its keen beak and 
powerful claws ! Some tornado must have caught it in its 
gusts, and whirled it, dizzied and bhnd, amidst the huge tur- 
moil of space — away ! away in baffled battling into unfami- 
liar realms. That the bird was both weary and confounded 
was evidenced in the fact, that the most vigilant, wary and 
ferocious of all the falcons could be approached and killed 
by a boy, with a small fowling-piece, loaded with bird-shot. 
Could the great Cinerious Eagle, shot by Mr. Audubon, 
have been, too, astray ? At all events, the bird I saw is not 
identical with Audubon's Bird of Washington, as figured! 
Of this I am equally certain, as he supposed himself to be in 
the figuring and identification of the species, and hope to 
