[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The accipitral birds are the eagles, the vultures, the falcons, the
owls--all those birds that bite and tear unhappy mammals as well as
birds of more peaceful habits than themselves. They have all, it will be
observed, Roman noses, which may be the reason why the Romans adopted
the eagle as a standard; as also it may not. They have striking
characteristics of their own, and have been found very useful by poets
and other people who have to wander off the main subject to make plain
what they mean. The owl is the wiseacre of Nature, the vulture is a vile
harpy, and the eagle is the embodiment of everything great and mighty,
and glorious and free, and swooping and catoptrical. There is very
little to say against the eagle, except that he looks a deal the better
a long way off, like an impressionist picture or a volcano. When the
eagle is flying and swooping, or soaring and staring impudently at the
sun, or reproaching an old feather of his own in the arrow that sticks
in his chest, or mewing his mighty youth (a process I never quite
understood)--when he is doing noble and poetical things of this class at
an elevation of a great many thousand feet above the sea level he is
sublime. When you meet him down below, on his feet, much of the
sublimity is rubbed off.

[Illustration: CHARLEY.]

[Illustration: CORNS,--]

[Illustration: BUNIONS,--]

[Illustration: CHILBLAINS, OR--]

[Illustration: IKINESS?]

There is only one eagle in the world with whom I can claim anything like
a confidential friendship, although I know many. His name is Charley.
If, after a chat with Bob the Bactrian, you will turn your back to the
camel-house and walk past the band-stand toward the eagles' aviaries,
you will observe that the first corner cage is occupied by wedge-tailed
eagles--a most disrespectful name, by-the-bye, I think. There are
various perches, including a large tree-trunk, for these birds; but one
bird, the oldest in the cage, doesn't use them. He keeps on the floor by
the bars facing the place where Suffa Culli and Jung Perchad stand to
take up passengers, and looks out keenly for cats. That is Charley. He
is all right when you know him, is Charley, and I have it on the best
authority that there are no flies on him. A rat on the straggle has been
known to turn up in this aviary and run the gauntlet of all the
cages--till he reached Charley; nothing alive and eatable ever got past
_him_. I h