BALD EAGLE. 
31 
The bird from which the foregoing 1 description was 
taken, was shot near Great Egg Harbour, in the month 
of January. It was in excellent order, and weighed 
about eleven pounds. Dr Samuel B. Smith, of this 
city, obliged me with a minute and careful dissection 
of it; from whose copious and very interesting notes 
on the subject I shall extract such remarks as are 
suited to the general reader. 
“ The eagle you sent me for dissection was a beautiful 
female. It had two expansions of the gullet. The first 
principally composed of longitudinal bundles of fibre, 
in which (as the bird is ravenous and without teeth) 
large portions of unmasticated meats are suffered to dis- 
solve before they pass to the lower or proper stomach, 
which is membranous. I did not receive the bird time 
enough to ascertain whether any chilification was 
effected by the juices from the vessels of this enlarge- 
ment of the oesophagus. I think it probable, that it 
also has a regurgitating, or vomiting power, as the bird 
constantly swallows large quantities of indigestible sub- 
stances, such as quills, hairs, &c. In this sac of the 
eagle, I found the quill feathers of the small white gull ; 
and in the true stomach, the tail and some of the breast 
feathers of the same bird, and the dorsal vertebrae of a 
large fish. This excited some surprise, until you made 
me acquainted with the fact of its watching the fish 
hawks, and robbing them of their prey. Thus we see, 
throughout the whole empire of animal life, power is 
almost always in a state of hostility to justice ; and 
of the Deity only can it truly be said, that justice is 
commensurate with power ! 
“ The eagle has the several auxiliaries to digestion 
and assimilation in common with man. The liver was 
unusually large in your specimen. It secretes bile, 
which stimulates the intestines, prepares the chyle for 
blood, and by this very secretion of bile, (as it is a 
deeply respiring animal,) separates or removes some 
obnoxious principles from the blood. (See Dr Kush’s 
admirable lecture on this important viscus in the human 
subject.) The intestines were also large, long, convolute, 
