THE LARGEST OF ITS SPECIES
A HINT TO OUR GOVERNMENT.
The biggest American eagle in the United States roosts in the state house in this city. It is the property of Maj. E. J. Anderson, the state comptroller, and its roosting place is on an imitation rock in the window of his private office. The bird measures seven feet and eleven inches from tip to tip of its wings, and it is so tall that if it were alive and standing on the ground it could pick off a man’s waistcoat buttons without getting on tiptoe. The profusion of little fluffy feathers on the under sides of the wings, the peculiar markings of the breast, and the depression in the top of the beak are evidences of the great age to which the bird had attained before it was killed. Those skilled in such matters estimate that it must have been at least 75 years old. It is a genuine Washington or American eagle, and probably its only rival in the country, dead or alive, is at the Smithsonian institute at Washington, but the specimen there is smaller.
The graceful yet powerful pose of this bird and the magnificent sweep of its wings show clearly how great a libel upon the bird of freedom is the atrocious figure that attempts to soar over the bundle of sticks on the back of the buzzard dollars of the present day. If the government will send an artist to Trenton it can obtain a model from which it can make a dollar that will not bring the blush of shame to the cheek of every American who has to spend it.
Maj. Anderson’s eagle was shot in Hunterdon county, in this state. The bird is one of the most rare in the country, and it is scarcely ever even seen near the haunts of civilization. It is supposed that advanced age had made this bird unable to successfully pursue and capture the game of the wilderness, and that therefore it had ventured into settled regions for tamer prey. It was found near a farmer’s barn, and the farmer filled it full of lead from a shotgun and a revolver without killing it, and finally captured it alive, having disabled it by wounds in the wing. It was taken to the village station, and lived there on exhibition a day or two before it died. It was then given to Maj. Anderson, who had it stuffed and mounted, and guards it now with the tenderness and pride of a young father. He has refused for it offers running well into the hundreds of dollars.—Trenton Cor. New York Sun.