stake or chance. "The poised eagle"
becomes poetry like all the rest, when you observe that his "eagle
glance" has taken in a piece of fresh meat somewhere, and he wishes to
keep someone else from getting it. He then scrambles to the edge of a
board, or hitches along to the end of a branch of the dead tree where he
sits, and drops off like a hen, making an awkward flight toward the
morsel that has attracted him. And when he gets there he edges
suspiciously around it in the evident fear that it may be alive and may
bite him.

You will, however, be able to observe some of his traits that seem more
natural. There are the cruel eyes and the relentless expression; the
"hooked claws" and the "bending beak." It is an eye whose expression
never changes, and which regards with constant malice all its
surroundings. The brow, which gives it the look so much admired, seems,
according to Mr. Ruskin, to be merely a provision of nature to keep the
sun from shining into it, thus disposing, Ruskin-like, at one fell swoop
of one of the most striking of the poetical myths.

Still others will be disposed of if you stay long. Did any one of my
readers ever read that neither the eagle nor the lion would eat anything
they had not themselves slain? Well, later advices seem to indicate that
both will upon occasion descend to carrion of the basest quality, and
that both consume considerable time in their native haunts in catching
and devouring bugs. Lizards and such small fry are assiduously looked
for. Convincing proof of this, in the eagle's case, was not wanting in
one brief visit to the above-mentioned famous and beautiful resort. In
the same huge cage with the eagles were certain crocodiles, or
alligators, or whatever name you may choose to call the Floridian
saurian by. To me they all seem very much alike. I suppose this is
because I do not care much about supra-orbital bones, or the number of
teeth or toes, or minute particulars of anatomical conformation, but am
disposed, after a blundering and non-technical fashion, to mostly regard
looks and actions. The adult, or semi-adult, alligators lie all the time
asleep, never moving, never winking, never so much as apparently
breathing, and looking very much like chunks in a clearing. One wonders,
in view of all the stories told, if they are really alive this fine
summer weather, when there is no excuse for hibernation, and if so, how
they ever manage to catch anything except possibly by lying