CLASS II. AVES: ORDER 1. RAPTORES. 
39 
weight, from an elevation of fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, would be powerful ; but the 
eagle shoots down with a great initial velocity, and as she delivers the whole of her momentum 
with the claw, she not only dashes the animal to the earth, but plunges the claw into its body up 
to the toe, dislocating the spine or breaking the skull of the feebler quadrupeds, and therefore 
usually inflicting instant death. 
Stern and unsocial in their character, yet confident in their strength and efficient means of de- 
fense, the eagles delight to dwell in the solitude of inaccessible rocks, on whose summits they 
build their rude nest and sit in lone majesty, while with their keen and piercing eye they sweep 
l^e plains below, even to the horizon. The combined extent and minuteness of their vision, 
often includi]]g not merely towns, villages, and districts, but countries and even kingdoms in its 
vast circuit, at the same time carefully piercing the depths of forests, the mazes of swamps, and 
the intricacies of lawns and meadows, so as to discover every moving object — even the sly and 
stealthy animals that constitute their prey— form a power of sight to which human experience 
makes no approach. If we connect with this amazing gift of vision the power of flight which en- 
ables these birds to shoot through the heavens so as to pass from one zone to another in a single 
day and at a single flight, we shall readily comprehend how it is that they have in all ages so 
impressed the popular imagination as to render them the standing types and emblems of power. 
In ancient times the lion was the representative of kings, but the eagle, soaring in the sky, was 
made the companion of the gods, and the constant associate of Jupiter himself In ignorance of 
the true qualities of these animals, courage and magnanimity, daring and dignity, were regarded 
as their attributes, and .thus they were deemed fitting representatives of the noblest and most ex- 
alted of both gods and men. We now know that both the eagle and the lion are butchers, glut- 
tons, and cowards, but such is our inherent admiration of power, that, inasmuch as they are the 
most destructive of animals, their names are still associated in our minds with something of re- 
spect and admiration. The ass is meek, patient, useful, intelligent, but his name, applied to a 
man, is the most insulting of epithets ; the goose is gentle, inoffensive, and one of the very wisest 
of the feathered creation, but it furnishes the popular mind and tongue with a term significant of 
something bordering on idiocy. Who so base as not to spurn these degrading terms ? Who so 
sage as not to be flattered by the title of lion or eagle? 
And after all something may be said in mitigation of even the general charge of destructive- 
ness brought against these prominent members of the carnivorous tribes. The common idea is, 
"that they are constantly engaged in the work of death and destruction ; that the lion in the des- 
ert is forever roaring and rending; and that the mountain air can never rest for the wing of the 
eagle ; that her shadow is a constant ensign of dread, and her cry a never-ceasing sound of fear. 
This is the general notion, but nothing can be wider from the fact, and nothing would be more 
in opposition to the whole tenor of nature's econonay. It is the small powers and the feeble ex- 
ertions in nature that are never at rest. Those creeping currents of air which we can hardly call 
breezes, and which tell only upon the leaves of the aspen, are never at rest ; but storms are not 
frequent, and a hurricane, even in what may be called hurricane countries, is an event of compara- 
tively rare occurrence. And it is so among birds. The gentle sparrow is always catching cater- 
pillars, and devours fifty in a day, while the golden eagle does not feed once a day — nay, on the 
average not oftener than once a week. Even when eagles are on the hunt, they do not occasion 
much general alarm to those animals upon which they prey. The eagle, when towering in her 
pride of place, certainly commands in vision, and can command in power of destruction, a very 
wide horizon; but still her command, even at this time, is one of peace and general safety; and 
as hawks and buzzards and harriers, which are really far more destructive than eagles, are not 
very fond of beating the bushes if there is an eagle above them in the sky, it is doubtful whether, 
upon the whole, the golden eagle may not partake more of the character of a preserver than of 
that of a destroyer. Even when she has singled out her prey, and is about to stoop at it, the 
fluttering wings, as she winds herself up to the bent of her power, and the loud note with which 
she begins her descent, all tend to warn the rest of the animals, so that they lie close ; the eagle 
devours the prey in silence, and she does not stoop again on the same ground during the same 
day." 
