PERES (pe'res), (Heb. teh'res). In A. V.
'ossifrage ' (Lev. xi:t3; Deut. xiv:12).
Although Neser is unquestionably the Hebrew name of the eagle, a genus so conspicuous, and to this moment so common, in Palestine probably possessed more than one designation in the na tional dialects of the country, and under the term ossifrage it would indicate the great sea eagle. But Peres is by other translators referred to a hawk, which they denominate Aceipiter.
Their scientific application, however. has been referred to two birds; osprey being the Pandion Haliartus, 'the fishing hawk,' and ossifrage the Aquila Ossifraga of Brisson, or 'great sea eagle' of Pennant : authors having even pretended that fragments of bones have been found in the stomach of the last mentioned. If this fact were proved, it would justify the denomination of ossifrage, or 'bone-breaker ;' but the dispensation of faculties in nature always indicates a purpose, which in the .case of the Pandion, living as it does ex clusively upon fish, appears inapplicable; for theirs are not the bones understood by the name, and such a.s the bird accidentally swallows arc small and without nutriment. When we place together Peres, a name derived from a root denoting 'to crush' or 'break,' and find that by the Greek name (piffv-ri (Phene) the Hellenic nations called the Lammer Geyer of the Swiss, which Savigny (Oiseaux d'Egypte ct dc Syric) has proved to be the ossifrage of the Romans, then it becomes an immediate question why such a denomination should have been bestowed. The answer is, we
think, satisfactory ; for constituting the largest fly ing bird of the old continent, and being a tenant of the highest ranges of mountains in Europe, western Asia, and Africa, though sometimes feed ing on carrion, and not appearing to take up prey like eagles in the talons, it pursues the chamois, young. ibex, mountain deer, or marmot, among precipices, until it drives, or by a rush of its wings forces, the game over the brink, to be dashed to pieces below. It thus deservedly ob tained the name of bone-breaker.
The species in Europe is little if at all inferior in size to the Condor of South America, measur ing from the point of the bill to the end of the tail four feet two or three inches, and sometimes ten feet in the expanse of wing; the head and neck are not, like those of vultures, naked, but covered with whitish narrow feathers; and there is a beard of bristly hair under the lower mandi ble: the rest of the plumage is nearly black and brown, with some whitish streaks on the shoul- ' ders. and an abundance of pale rust color on the back of the neck, the thighs, vent, and legs ; the toes are short, and bluish, and the claws strong. In the young the head and neck are black, and the species or variety of Abyssinia appears to be rusty and yellowish on the neck and stomach. It is the griffon of Cuvier, Gyfiaitos barbatus nomenclators. (See OSSIFRAGE.) C. H. S.