Now I begun this chapter by talking about eagles, and I have been rambling on about geese--but I have an object in all this. I wish to show my readers that we have taken certain notions, in regard to animals, from the ancients, which are erroneous; and which have a bad influence upon us. Many a time has a poor ass got a kick, just because of a prejudice that has been handed down from age to age. People scarcely think it wrong to abuse a creature that is called _stupid_! Now the ass is not stupid; and it is too bad, wrongfully to give him a hard name, and then to kick him for it! And it is much the same with dogs. How much have these poor creatures suffered, in their day and generation, just because the ancients called them hard names, and thus transmitted, even to our time, a prejudice! And the tranquil, quiet, harmless, goose--how often has a boy hurled a stone at one, and scarcely thought it wrong to wound a creature that is regarded as the emblem of folly! Now, as I said, we ought to reflect upon these things; we ought not to allow such prejudices to influence us, and to make us really cruel to brute beasts, who are but as God made them, and who fulfil His design in their creation, more perfectly, I suspect, than some other beings I could name, who think pretty well of themselves! And one observation more is to be made here. The facts we have stated show what erroneous notions the ancients had of virtue. They called the lion and eagle noble, only because they are powerful; they called the dog mean, though he is a pattern of fidelity; they called the ass stupid, though he is patient and frugal; they called the goose silly, because of its great mildness. All these things prove that in the olden time, people thought much of power, and almost worshipped it, even when it was selfish and savage, as is the king of beasts or of birds; while they rather despised the noble virtues of patience, fidelity, friendship, frugality and mildness. I might go on to tell you of the eagles, with which subject I began this chapter; and especially of the harpy eagle, of which a fine portrait accompanies this number. But in Volume I., page 5, I have said so much on the subject, that I must cut the matter short, only saying that the harpy eagle is a native of South America, and is the most powerful of birds, it being able, by the stroke of its wings, to break a man’s skull. [Illustration] April. This month derives its name from the Latin word _Aperio_, to open, because at this period the earth is opened by the sower and the planter, to receive the seed. In the southern parts of the United States, it is a very warm, pleasant season, and so it is in Italy, and Spain. In Carolina, the weather is so warm in April, that the people put on their thin clothes, the forests are in leaf, the apple-trees are in bloom, or perchance already the blossoms are past.