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=256.= THE WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD, EAGLE.
Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands a wide view of the neighboring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue their busy avocations below,—the snow-white Gulls slowly winnowing the air; the busy Tringoe coursing along the sands; trains of Ducks streaming over the surface; silent and watchful Cranes, intent and wading; clamorous crows; and all the winged multitudes that subsist by the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these hovers one, whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be the Fish Hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings, on the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam around. At this moment, the eager looks of the Eagle are all ardor; and levelling his neck for flight, he sees the Fish Hawk once more emerge, struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who launching into the air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the Fish Hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unincumbered Eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his fish; the Eagle poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods.
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=Stephen Elliott,[64] 1771-1830.=
From "Views of Nature."
=257.= COMPLETENESS AND VARIETY OF NATURE.
What is there that will not be included in the history of nature? The earth on which we tread, the air we breathe, the waters around the earth, the material forms that inhabit its surface, the mind of man, with all its magical illusions and all its inherent energy, the planets that move around our system, the firmament of heaven—the smallest of the invisible atoms which float around our globe, and the most majestic of the orbs that roll through the immeasurable fields of space—all are parts of one system, productions of one power, creations of one intellect, the offspring of Him, by whom all that is inert and inorganic in creation was formed, and from whom all that have life derive their being.
Of this immense system,—all that we can examine,—this little globe that we inherit, is full of animation, and crowded with forms, organized, glowing with life, and generally sentient. No space is unoccupied; the exposed surface of the rock is incrusted with living substances; plants occupy the bark, and decaying limbs, of other plants; animals live on the surface, and in the bodies, of other animals: inhabitants are fashioned and adapted to equatorial heats, and polar ice;—air, earth, and ocean teem with life;—and if to other worlds the same proportion of life and of enjoyment has been distributed which has been allotted to ours, if creative benevolence has equally filled every other planet of every other system, nay, even the suns themselves, with beings, organized, animated, and intelligent, how countless must be the generations of the living! What voices which we cannot hear, what languages that we cannot understand, what multitudes that we cannot see, may, as they roll along the stream of time, be employed hourly, daily, and forever, in choral songs of praise, hymning their great Creator!
And when, in this almost prodigal waste of life, we perceive that every being, from the puny insect which flutters in the evening ray; from the lichen which we can scarcely distinguish on the mouldering rock; from the fungus that springs up and re-animates the mass of dead and decomposing substances; that every living form possesses a structure as perfect in its sphere, an organization sometimes as complex, always as truly and completely adapted to its purposes and modes of existence as that of the most perfect animal; when we discover them all to be governed by laws as definite, as immutable, as those which regulate the planetary movements, great must be our admiration of the wisdom which has arrayed, and the power which has perfected this stupendous fabric.