which enables them to act through its instrumentality with marvellous dexterity and power, and to expend or reserve their energies, which they can do with the utmost exactitude, in their apparently interminable flights. Lifting-capacity of Birds.--The muscular power in birds is usually greatly in excess, particularly in birds of prey, as, e.g. the condors, eagles, hawks, and owls. The eagles are remarkable in this respect-these having been known to carry off young deer, lambs, rabbits, hares, and, it is averred, even young children. Many of the fishing birds, as the pelicans and herons, can likewise carry considerable loads of fish ;1 and even the smaller birds, as the records of spring show, are capable of transporting comparatively large twigs for building purposes. I myself have seen an owl, which weighed a little over 10 ounces, lift 2 ounces, or a quarter of its own weight, without effort, after having fasted twenty-four hours and a friend informs me that a short time ago a splendid osprey was shot at Littlehampton, on the coast of Sussex, with a fish 5 lbs. weight in its mouth. There are many points in the history and economy of birds which crave our sympathy while they elicit our admiration. Their indubitable courage and miraculous powers of flight invest them with a superior dignity, and secure for their order almost a duality of existence. The swallow, tiny and inconsiderable as it may appear, can traverse 1000 miles at a single journey; and the albatross, despising compass and landmark, trusts himself boldly for weeks together to the mercy or fury of the mighty ocean. The huge condor of the Andes lifts himself by his sovereign will to a height where no sound is heard, save the airy tread of his vast pinions, and, from an unseen point, surveys in solitary grandeur the wide range of plain and pasture-land ;2 while the bald eagle, nothing daunted by the din and indescribable confusion of the queen of waterfalls, the stupendous Niagara, sits composedly on his 1 The heron is in the habit, when pursued by the falcon, of disgorging the contents of his crop in order to reduce his weight. 2 The condor, on some occasions, attains an altitude of six miles. giddy perch, until inclination or desire prompts him to plunge into or soar above the drenching mists which, shapeless and ubiquitous, perpetually rise from the hissing waters of the nether caldron. |