BRITISH BIRDS.
BIRDS OF PREY.
Rapacious birds, or those which subsist chiefly on flesh, are much less numerous than ravenous quadrupeds; and it seems wisely provided by nature, that their powers should be equally confined and limited with their numbers; for if to the rapid flight and penetrating eye of the Eagle, were joined the strength and voracious appetite of the Lion, the Tiger, or the Glutton, no artifice could evade the one, and no speed could escape the other.
The characters of birds of the ravenous kind are particularly strong, and easily to be distinguished: the formidable talons, the large head, the strong and crooked beak, indicate their ability for rapine and carnage; their dispositions are fierce, and their nature untractable; unsociable and cruel, they avoid the haunts of civilization, and retire to the most melancholy and wild recesses of nature, where they can enjoy, in gloomy solitude, the effects of their depredatory excursions. The fierceness of their nature extends even to their young, which they drive from the nest at a very early period. The difficulty of procuring a constant supply of food for them sometimes overcomes the feelings of parental affection, and they have been known to destroy them in the fury of
