It is now found as far North
as the Border of the Arctic Sea, where it cultivates amicable relations
with the hyperborean humming-bird, and Professor GRANT is at present
attempting to naturalize it in Saint Domingo. The time is probably not
far distant when it will prune its morning wing on the upper pole, and
go to roost on the equator. It is, upon the whole, a grasping bird, and
inspires the weaker tribes with terror; yet, notwithstanding its
fierceness, it perches familiarly on the Arms of the American people.
Although the Birdofreedom makes a magnificent appearance at all seasons,
it is in its fullest feather about the Fourth of July. Its truculent
disposition is then manifested by a threatening attitude toward the
Anglo-Saxon Lion, (_Leo Britannicus,_) which it has twice worsted in
single combat, and to whose well-knit frame it is prepared at any moment
to administer a third sockdologer.
There are many varieties of the Eagle--as the Russian and Prussian,
(which, singularly enough, have two heads,) the bald Eagle, the Osprey
or Sea Eagle, the Golden Eagle, &c. The Golden species was formerly
quite common in the United States, but has now almost entirely
disappeared. Of the smaller species of the genus Falco, it is only
necessary to say that, like the Eagle, they are inedible.
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