or still more, as he sweeps along with steady flight, circling round and glancing with searching eye over the plain beneath. Suddenly his attitude changes; he closes his wings, and, head downwards, drops to earth slantingwise with a rushing noise, seizing in his claws the startled fawn as it dashes by at full speed, the frolicking rabbit darting into its hole, or the terrified bird upon whom his choice has fallen. Then, with a powerful stroke he rises up again, and is lost to sight as he soars aloft and regains the rocky peak where his eyrie is built and his children are clamouring for food. So, too, the dexterous Falcon swoops upon his prey swift as an arrow, his pointed wings striking the air, and then closing at once upon his body, while his long rounded tail guides him in his flight. Who would think that such a powerful and bold robber could have anything in common with the soft feathered owl which sits blinking its large eyes in the hollow of the tree till the twilight falls? And yet the Owl, with very little change in structure, has become as fitted to follow prey at night as the falcon is by day-- “What time the preying owl, with sleepy wing, Sweeps o’er the cornfield, studious.” The soft, round, broad wings, which would serve badly for striking a quarry from on high, are exactly fitted for gliding in the silence of the night, as, guided by wide open eye and ear, he skims over the fields or round the stacks in the yard to pounce noiselessly upon the unwary mouse or to seize the flying beetles and bats. Then the sharp claws appear quickly from under the downy feathered feet, and clutch the smallest prey with needle-like precision; and away the owl flies to his nest, so quietly that even the other animals close by are not alarmed, but in ignorant security remain till he comes to strike again. And as the day and the night by land have their relentless freebooters, so the sea too has its eagle king; for the Osprey, with its nest on a high rock, hovers over the open sea, and, dashing into the deep, returns with a large fish in its claws; and, as it tears the flesh from under the glittering scales, reminds us that there is no spot on the earth in which some bird does not seek its prey. We have now in very brief outline followed the feathery tribe from the flightless penguin to the boldly-soaring eagle, the king of the air. Those feathers which in the swimming bird are scarcely more than finely-divided scales, and in the ostrich mere loose nodding plumes, have become in the albatross, the vulture, and the soaring falcon, flying instruments of such power and strength that the earth and the water are as nothing to them compared with the free ocean of air; while even the tiny graceful swallow flies for hundreds of miles to its winter home.